POST Query API - SFTP Intermittent Connectivity Issue

[mandmdiet]

Hello Friends,

We have an application that we're rolling out to a few hundred Open Dental practices. We recently rolled out to a practice where we routinely get an error from Open Dental when attempting to use the POST query API. The error is about connecting to our SFTP server. The error is only occurring intermittently though. We will go through times where things are working normally and times where nothing is getting through.

This is the error message:

Unable to save query result. Connecting to [address] has failed with user: [username]\\r\\nA connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond\"\nInner Exception: Response status code does not indicate success: 400 (Bad Request).

We have close to 30 OD practices online so far and are not having this same issue with any other practices. All are successfully using this SFTP server to save the results of POST requests very reliably. When we logged into the machine to do some direct testing we were also able to make a successful SFTP connection using Filezilla.

What are some good steps to take to further troubleshoot this issue? Are there logs we can look at or settings we can change to try and address this problem?

Thanks!

[SLeon]

Good morning,

I assume the SftpAddress is functioning properly if the other ~30 dental offices are able to successfully utilize it. Manually connecting from the Dental Office server (wherever the eConnector/APIService is installed) to the SftpAddress is the perfect first step.

I have not experienced this error message, nor has it been reported before. These are the other things that come to mind:

• Do you get this every time you use an SFTP API method for this office, or only some of the time?
• Depending on the Sftp site, you might be able to look at logs to see if the dental office in question attempted to connect. This might narrow where the error is occurring.
• Are you able to discern if the same SqlCommand routinely yields this error or not?
• You might be able to determine if the office has connectivity issues with other actions (like eServices) if present.
• There could also be an antivirus running and causing issues on their servers.

Happy to help troubleshoot with any more information you obtain.

[mandmdiet]

Do you get this every time you use an SFTP API method for this office, or only some of the time?

It is only some of the time.

Depending on the Sftp site, you might be able to look at logs to see if the dental office in question attempted to connect. This might narrow where the error is occurring.

We did that, we don't have any errors occurring on the SFTP side

Are you able to discern if the same SqlCommand routinely yields this error or not?

No, sometimes a command that previously succeeded fails. There doesn't seem to be a pattern like this.

You might be able to determine if the office has connectivity issues with other actions (like eServices) if present.

We do have some other issues with the econnector, also intermittent, and happening with the PUT endpoint. The error is "The operation was canceled.\nInner Exception: Unable to read data from the transport connection: Operation canceled.\nInner Exception: Operation canceled"

Are there any troubleshooting tools in Open Dental we can use to get more information about failures? For instance, valuable logging pertaining to the API or other configuration settings that might give us different results?

[mandmdiet]

Thank you for the reply SLeon,

I put my answers inline below.

Do you get this every time you use an SFTP API method for this office, or only some of the time?

It is only some of the time.

Depending on the Sftp site, you might be able to look at logs to see if the dental office in question attempted to connect. This might narrow where the error is occurring.

We did that, we don't have any errors occurring on the SFTP side

Are you able to discern if the same SqlCommand routinely yields this error or not?

No, sometimes a command that previously succeeded fails. There doesn't seem to be a pattern like this.

You might be able to determine if the office has connectivity issues with other actions (like eServices) if present.

We do have some other issues with the econnector, also intermittent, and happening with the PUT endpoint. The error is "The operation was canceled.\nInner Exception: Unable to read data from the transport connection: Operation canceled.\nInner Exception: Operation canceled"

Are there any troubleshooting tools in Open Dental we can use to get more information about failures? For instance, valuable logging pertaining to the API or other configuration settings that might give us different results?

[SLeon]

Good morning,

If you are using the Remote Mode of the API (i.e. using the eConnector), you can see common troubleshooting steps here. That page also contains the location of the eConnector's log files, which could indicate an issue.

The analogous logs for the Service Mode of the API are found in the \\OpenDental\OpenDentalAPIService\Logger directory. However I wouldn't expect to see anything there, as the API request is successfully returning an error message to the client (you).

If the above fails to yield helpful information, you (or the dental office) might consider calling support to troubleshoot the issue, especially if it is the eConnector having problems. I would suggest you are able to cross possible antivirus interference off the list prior to calling, as it will be one of the first questions we ask.

We will continue to investigate what other things could cause this error for you, so please continue to update this thread as you learn more.