Automated Promotion no longer activates with New entrants to the segment only

gyutaelee

Hi brainCloud team,

We are seeing an issue where an Automated Promotion that previously worked correctly no longer activates under the same conditions.

The promotion we are testing is configured as follows:

App ID: 15389
Promotion ID: 6
Promotion Type: Automated Promotion
Applicable members: currently set to Both existing and new entrants to the segment
Target Segment: XP level based segment

This promotion was configured about a month ago, and from the beginning its Applicable members setting was New entrants to the segment only. It previously worked correctly with that setting.

Previously, when a new user progressed in the game and newly satisfied the XP level condition for the target segment, the Automated Promotion became eligible and was shown correctly on the client.

Recently, however, the promotion no longer activates with the same setting and the same flow. We have currently changed it to Both existing and new entrants to the segment as a temporary workaround for testing.

Current reproduction flow:

Start with a new user
The user starts in a state where they do not satisfy the target segment condition
The user progresses in the game and satisfies the XP level condition
In the brainCloud console, the user is confirmed to be included in the target segment
However, Promotion ID 6 does not appear in Eligible Promotions
If we change the same promotion’s Applicable members setting to Both existing and new entrants to the segment, it immediately becomes eligible

So it looks like the user is correctly entering the target segment due to an XP level change, but the Automated Promotion is not being associated/activated when using New entrants to the segment only.

We also noticed this related forum thread mentioning a similar issue and a patch:

https://forums.getbraincloud.com/topic/355/automated-promotion-not-associated-for-users-already-in-target-segment

Could you please confirm the following?

Is New entrants to the segment only expected to activate when a user newly satisfies a segment condition due to an XP level change?
Since this used to work before but no longer works with the same configuration and flow, could this be related to a recent patch or a change in promotion/segment association logic?
After updating XP level, is there any additional refresh or reevaluation step required besides calling RefreshPromotions?
As a workaround, Both existing and new entrants to the segment works. Is this the recommended setting, or should New entrants to the segment only still work for this case?

Thank you.

Paul Winterhalder

Hi @gyutaelee ,

Are you by any chance taking an automated promotion that you had used before and just changing the dates? Or maybe changing the criteria in some other way (the xp level?)

Because that won't work. Our system keeps track of the fact that the user has participated in that promotion before - no matter what the criteria is.

I mention this because the promotion id is 6 - which of course means it was the 6th promotion ever created. I figure such a low number means you are likely re-using an existing promotion.

Just a guess though -- try creating a brand-new promotion to see if you get the same behaviour.

gyutaelee

Thank you for your response.

We used the automated promotion without making any changes to it. However, we confirmed that it works correctly in the production app.

It seems that the issue may have been temporary, or that there was something incorrect in our configuration at the time. If the issue occurs again, we will contact you again with more details.

Thank you for your help.