> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Feed Cycle Failure, Alibris > Triggered when /upload/listings has no confirmed ack in 48h, feed is blind, all listing changes stuck. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Key Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Marketplace](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) > Triggered when /upload/listings has no confirmed ack in 48h, feed is blind, all listing changes stuck. ## At a glance > P1 alert. Fires when the Alibris outbound listings feed (`/upload/listings`) has not received a confirmed ack from Alibris in 48 hours. While active, every listing edit is stuck in a queue with no path to Alibris. The catalogue is frozen on the last successful cycle's state. | | | | ----------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **What it counts** | Boolean alert state, 1 if `time_since_last_acked_outbox_upload > 48h`, else 0. Maintains a list of queued-but-undelivered outbox files. | | **API endpoint + report** | Derived from the Pure-FTPd connector's last-successful-ack heartbeat. Vortex IQ polls Alibris's `/download/acks` directory every 4 hours. | | **Severity** | **P1**. Every hour the alert is open, the merchant is operating blind on Alibris. Frozen catalogue; new listings invisible; sold-elsewhere stock still orderable on Alibris (stockout cancellations); price changes don't propagate. | | **Fees / commission** | Not applicable directly. Indirect: stockout cancellations during outage count toward seller-error cancellation rate (3% threshold). | | **Refunds / cancellations** | Not directly. Downstream: cancellation spike during and 7 days after; watch [Cancellation Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/cancellation-rate). | | **Currency** | Not applicable. | | **Common root causes** | (1) Pure-FTPd credential rotation not reflected in connector config (\~32%); (2) Alibris-side maintenance window overran (\~22%); (3) Network connectivity loss (\~18%); (4) Outbound file format violation silently rejected (\~15%); (5) Disk-full or quota on outbox staging (\~9%); (6) Other (\~4%). | | **Multi-marketplace overlap** | Each marketplace runs its own feed. Co-firing with [AbeBooks Feed Cycle Failure](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/abebooks/feed-cycle-failure) suggests merchant-side cause. | | **Time window** | `RT`. | | **Alert trigger** | `no successful upload >48h`. | | **Roles** | owner, operations, engineering. | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Alibris data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading. ## Worked example A US bookseller, 32,100 active Alibris listings, 4-hourly outbound feed cycle. Incident timeline 28 Apr 26 to 01 May 26. | Timestamp (UTC) | Event | Operational consequence | | ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------- | | 28 Apr 04:00 | Last successful outbox upload + ack | Catalogue snapshot frozen | | 28 Apr 04:00 to 30 Apr 04:00 | 4-hourly upload cycle attempts continue, no ack | Files queued; no visible failure to merchant | | 30 Apr 04:00 | Alert threshold crossed (48h since last ack) | **Card fires** | | 30 Apr 09:14 | Ops team paged | - | | 30 Apr 11:32 | Root cause: Pure-FTPd password rotated 27 Apr; connector still using old | Stockout cancellations: 9 between 28 Apr and 30 Apr | | 30 Apr 12:48 | Connector config updated; reconnect succeeds | First successful upload acked | | 30 Apr 13:14 | Backlog of 14 queued cycles re-uploaded and acked | All catalogue changes propagate | | 30 Apr 14:02 | Card clears; cancellation-rate effect persists 7 days | - | Cumulative impact during 56-hour outage: | Impact dimension | Value | | -------------------------------------- | ---------------------- | | Listings frozen | 32,100 | | Stock changes queued | \~340 | | Stockout cancellations | 9 | | Repricer updates queued | \~9,200 | | Estimated revenue impact | $880 to $1,400 | | Cancellation rate impact (30D rolling) | +1.4 percentage points | Six things to notice that are specific to Alibris and the Pure-FTPd feed model: 1. **48 hours is the standard threshold but tune to your cycle.** 4-hourly cycle means a 12 or 24h alert threshold is more appropriate. 2. **Alibris's Pure-FTPd credentials don't rotate on a schedule but partner-side network drops happen.** Subscribe to Alibris developer notifications. 3. **Stockout cancellation cascade is the second-order damage.** During the 56h outage, 340 books sold elsewhere were still listed as available on Alibris. 4. **The 30 to 90 day reputational tail.** A 9-cancellation cluster sits in the 30D average for the next 30 days; expect "at risk" seller-standing tile through early Jun 26. 5. **The 9,200 queued repricer updates.** Letting them all fire post-outage causes a one-day price-change spike; phased re-upload (1,000/hour) is gentler. 6. **Library Services / institutional buyers may be MORE forgiving than retail.** Net-30 procurement cycles mean the institutional cohort doesn't notice a 2-day outage; retail buyers do. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together Feed cycle failure is the P1 operational alert. Pair with these: | Card | Why pair it with Feed Cycle Failure | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------- | | [Last Successful Upload](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/last-successful-upload) | Companion card; shows hours-since-last-good-cycle. | | [FTP Connection / Auth Health](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/ftp-connection-auth-health) | Auth failures precede feed failures by 4 to 24h. | | [Failed Batches (7d)](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/failed-batches) | 7-day history view. | | [Top Upload Error Types](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/top-upload-error-types) | Cause attribution post-recovery. | | [Inbound Orders File Lag](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/inbound-orders-file-lag) | Cross-direction check. | | [Cancellation Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/cancellation-rate) | Downstream impact. | | [Suspended Listings](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/suspended-pending-listings) | Downstream impact. | | [AbeBooks Feed Cycle Failure](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/abebooks/feed-cycle-failure) | Co-fire confirms merchant-side cause. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in the Alibris seller dashboard:** Alibris's seller dashboard does NOT publish a feed-health view. Three indirect views help during an active alert: 1. [**Sellers → Inventory → Upload History**](https://www.alibris.com/sellers/upload-history). Last N upload attempts; if most recent is >48h old, Alibris confirms it has not received your files. 2. [**Sellers → Inventory → Manage**](https://www.alibris.com/sellers/inventory). Spot-check a recently-edited listing; if Alibris shows OLD state, change hasn't propagated. 3. [**Alibris Developer Status Page**](https://www.alibris.com/developer/status) (intermittent service). **Why our alert may differ from Alibris's observations:** | Reason | Direction | Why | | -------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Alibris-side ack delay** | Card alerts but feed is fine | 99th-percentile delays can trip false alerts. Wait one cycle. | | **Connector polling cadence** | Card alerts 4h late | 4-hour poll cycle. | | **Outbox-empty edge case** | Card silent during quiet period | 72h with no listing changes won't trigger. | | **Manual upload via Alibris UI** | Card unaware | Manual CSV uploads bypass Pure-FTPd. | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | | [`abebooks.ab_alert_feed_failure`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/abebooks/feed-cycle-failure) | Independent feeds. | Co-fires suggest merchant-side cause. | | [`amazon.amzn_alert_feed_failure`](/nerve-centre/amazon/amzn_alert_feed_failure) | Different protocol (SP-API). | Different failure modes. | | [`shopify.alert_webhook_failure`](/nerve-centre/shopify/alert_webhook_failure) | Different mechanic. | Webhook-push vs FTP-poll. | ***
Marketplace-peer documentation cross-reference * [`abebooks.ab_alert_feed_failure`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/abebooks/feed-cycle-failure) * [`amazon.amzn_alert_feed_failure`](/nerve-centre/amazon/amzn_alert_feed_failure)
## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **The alert just fired. Next 30 minutes?** (1) Test Pure-FTPd auth manually with stored credentials. (2) Check outbox staging directory for queued files >48h old. (3) Open Alibris developer status page. **Alert cleared but cancellation rate still climbing. Why?** Operational damage takes 7 to 30 days to age out of the rolling 30D window. Stockout cancellations during outage stay in the rolling average. **Multi-marketplace, can a single network outage trip both Alibris and AbeBooks alerts?** Yes if cause is at merchant data centre. Marketplace-side outages affect only one. **Listing-quality / Buy Box, second-order damage?** Cancellation cascade is primary. Beyond that, [Listing Quality Score](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/alibris/listing-quality-score) sees no positive signals during outage and decays slightly. **Inventory-sync lag during outage, what's the right behaviour?** (a) Conservative: manually mark all Alibris listings out-of-stock. (b) Permissive: leave live, accept stockout cancellations. Most under-1,000-orders/day sellers use (b). **ISBN match quality, can it cause feed failures?** Indirectly. Severely malformed ISBN can cause Alibris to silently reject the entire file. **Why doesn't Alibris email me when my feed breaks?** Alibris does send weekly batch emails; cadence is 7+ days. This card's 48h threshold catches issues much faster. **Rare books vs commodity, outage impact difference?** Commodity bears most operational damage (high volume = many stockout cancellations). Rare books rarely produce same-day stockouts during 56h outages. **When does the alert turn off vs when do I act?** Alert auto-clears on next ack. But "act" until you've drained the outbox queue, confirmed listing states via spot-check, and proactively contacted affected buyers from the outage. **Alibris-specific: Library Services / institutional cohort, more or less affected by outages?** Less. Net-30 procurement cycles mean institutional buyers don't browse daily; a 2 to 3 day outage is invisible to them. Retail buyers do browse daily; they bear most reputational damage. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Feed Cycle Failure* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Alibris and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.