Problem connecting chatbot via webhook to mailchimp

tradebroker · June 2, 2022, 9:40am

Hello,
I am new to the pipedream but have previous experience with integromat. I know how to set this up in integromat.

I wanted to connect the Facebook messenger chatbot via webhook to Mailchimp. I want to add new email subscriber to the Mailchimp account. I connected the webhook it said it was OK then I added the step Mailchimp - add or update subscriber, log in to Mailchimp, and configured List, Subscriber, and Email address. When I check the data I see Name Surname, and email grabbed from messenger chatbot.

But testing results error 400:

What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Mark

JPG with 3 print screens below:

pierce · June 2, 2022, 1:46pm

Hi @tradebroker

Thanks for the context and screenshots, they’re very helpful to help troubleshoot.

400 or 422 usually means that the data available in the request isn’t exactly the format that the API expects. Sometimes it’s missing data or data in a format that’s not expected.

Could you open the data object in the response details? That contains the API’s actual message back to your workflow when you tried to perform this action.

I annotated your screenshot to point to this section in particular.

tradebroker · June 2, 2022, 2:05pm

Thank you @pierce for your response.

Regards,
Mark

Printscreen below:

pierce · June 2, 2022, 2:11pm

Thanks @tradebroker that’s exactly what we needed to see.

It looks like Mailchimp requires a marketing_permission_id field in order to perform that action.

Here’s a short article written by another user on how to get this value with PHP scripts: Passing GDPR preferences via the MailChimp API | Chris Shennan

And a gist describing how to use their API to retrieve this value:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/rohansen/3cad1e2168fc042bd04c4807d3d11099

MailChimp Marketing Permissions API

As i had a hard time finding anything in the mailchimp documentation, i thought it might help a lost soul to put this info here:
If you cannot find your marketing_permission_id of your mailchimp list (eg. for GDPR compliance), you can do a signup request (maybe others too), 
using the API, and it will return its data, including the marketing_permissions array containing the unique id for the opt-in.
POST:
{
  "email_address": "xxx@xxx.xx",
  "status": "subscribed",
  "status_if_new": "subscribed",
  "merge_fields": {
    "FNAME": "John",

This file has been truncated. show original

Perhaps the customer needs to grant permission to be added to your list?

tradebroker · June 2, 2022, 3:23pm

Hi, @pierce thanks for the reply.

I did two things I added a new field Marketing ID field - and I choose the trace_id. And after testing it added a new subscriber to Mailchimp. But only email address, without First name - which is weird in the Field Subscriber, it already asks for a Name and a Surname. Eventually, I added another Field Merge Field - FNAME and it works. So thank you.

But I have another two questions what if the Chatbot user in chatbot flow adds the email address but is already a Mailchimp subscriber - there will be an error. Question 1: is the workflow in pipedream will still be ON or it turns OFF because of this error?

And Question 2: the same story Chatbot user is putting in the field data which is not an email, for example, writes “What is that” is this error will turn down the pipedream workflow or NOT?

I am asking because for example when I use Integromat the error “user already subscribed” was not turning off the default configuration of the workflow.
But putting in Chatbot email field random data instead of email turned down the workflow immediately. Of course in Integromat, you can add extra settings to prevent this shut down caused by error.

But I am curious how the pipedream workflow responds to this kind of errors because they are pretty common in chatbots interacting with humans?

Thanks again.

Best regards,
Mark

pierce · June 2, 2022, 3:41pm

Hi @tradebroker,

Great. I’m not sure why the exactly steps.trigger.context.trace_id is solving the Marketing Permission ID requirement on this API call. The trace_id is an internal ID for your Pipedream workflow executions and not related to Mailchimp as far as I’m aware.

But to answer your two questions.

Pipedream will never automatically disable workflows, even if there’s an error in a specific execution. An error simply results an in error, Pipedream will record the error in your event logs. This allows you to reply the event later.
You’ll need to add your own validation for chatbot provided messages. I suggest using the Filter app which allows you to define which events should cause the workflow to end early and which should be accepted.

I recommend reading the short section about the Event Inspector in your deployed workflows for a deeper dive on how errors show in your workflows: Inspect Events

But in summary, events trigger an automated email notifying you of the error happening, but the workflow will not be disabled by errors automatically.