For each mass update, mass delete, or custom data task, Rhythm gives you up to four ways to review what happened: a preview spreadsheet before you commit, a completion screen when the run ends, a results spreadsheet with one row per record, and, if you leave the option selected, a completion email. Use this reference to understand what each one includes.
The Preview Spreadsheet
On the preview step, select Download the preview of this mass update. (or mass delete.) to download the file. Rhythm creates the preview without changing any records, and previews are never emailed.
The workbook has one sheet, named Preview. At the top, you see Bulk Data Operation Report, the date and time Rhythm produced it, and Table: with the record type. This timestamp can appear in GMT, in an AM/PM format, and without a timezone label instead of your local time, so keep that in mind when you compare it with when you ran the operation. The column headers appear below a blank row.
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| ID | The record ID. TBD appears when there is no record yet, such as a row a custom data task will create. |
| Name | The record’s title or name |
| Operation | UPDATE (blue), DELETE (red), or the name of a custom task’s operation |
| Status | Ready For Execution (green) means the record will be sent. Error (red) includes the reason. A missing record reads <Record> not found, for example Contact not found. |
| Old field / New field | One pair appears for every field being changed: the current value (in grey) and the value it will get. Delete previews have no field columns. |
| Old Version Number / New Version Number | The record’s current version in the preview |
If a row’s Status begins with Error, Rhythm will not change that record when you commit.
What to Check Before You Commit
- Row count — confirm there is one row for each record you expect.
- Status — review every Error or not found row, including the reason.
- New values — confirm the new values are present and correct. An empty New column means the value, file, or mapping is incomplete.
- Old values — confirm old values appear where you know the record has a value. An empty Old value suggests the field is on a different record type from the one you meant.
- Identifiers and postal codes — confirm leading zeros are intact. A value such as
2134where you expected02134means your spreadsheet stored it as a number; format the column as text and upload again. - Dates — confirm they are the dates you intended.
- Rows with nothing to change — Rhythm skips a row with no New values at all.
Warning
A preview with no errors does not guarantee the run will succeed. Some problems, especially in custom data tasks, appear only when the operation runs, not during preview validation. Preview also does not catch every mismatch: a value such as a status reason ID that differs from the stored ID only in capitalization can look correct on preview and still fail when the record is updated. Review the results spreadsheet after every run instead of relying on the preview alone.
The Completion Screen
When the run ends, the last step shows Bulk Operation Completed and We've completed your bulk update operation. Here's how it went:. The sentence says “update” for every operation. You also see:
| Item | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Successful: | Records reported as changed by the part of Rhythm responsible for them |
| Errors: | Records reported as errors, including IDs that were not found |
| Total: | All records counted |
| Green check | No errors |
| Red cross and Unfortunately, there were some errors. | At least one error |
| Click here to download the results. | The results spreadsheet |
The completion screen does not show which records were unchanged; open the results spreadsheet to see those rows. The screen also does not offer a direct way to start another upload. If you need to run another mass update, such as a repeated test before a full load, leave the mass update area and open it again.
The Results Spreadsheet
The results workbook uses the same layout as the preview, with these differences:
- Four summary rows appear below the title: Success:, No Change:, Errors:, and Total:.
- The fourth column is Outcome instead of Status. It shows the outcome reported by the part of Rhythm responsible for the record, with any error reason after a colon.
- A record whose version number did not move shows No Change (orange), with the note No Change: subsequent to applying edits, the record had the same values as before and thus did not need to be changed.
- New Version Number shows the version after the change.
| Outcome | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Success | The record was changed or deleted |
| No Change | The record already had the requested values |
| Error: reason | The part of Rhythm responsible for the record refused it, or Rhythm could not work out its new value; the reason follows |
| Ready For Execution | The record was not sent because it had nothing to change, so Rhythm skipped it |
| TBD in the ID column | A custom task created a record, but no ID came back |
Custom Data Task Extras
Some custom data tasks report more detail. When a task reports the values it found before changing a record, those values fill the Old columns. When a task adds a note about a row, such as an address in the file that differed from the contact’s address and was not updated, Rhythm adds the note to the outcome. When a task creates a record, the new record’s ID appears in the ID column. For an ordinary mass update or mass delete, Rhythm already knows the record before the job runs and fills Old from that lookup. A custom data task finds the matching record in the first place, so it must report its own old values for the Old columns to be filled. Blank Old columns on a custom data task can be normal for this reason, and they do not always mean something went wrong.
Why the Counts Can Disagree
The summary rows in the workbook, the counts on the completion screen, and the counts in the email are calculated slightly differently. Records with a planning error, and records skipped because they had nothing to change, are not included in every count. A row shown as No Change can also be counted under Success:. Some customers have seen the confirmation or completion screen’s total appear much larger than the number of records in the source query or file. Other than the ordinary discrepancies described here, that gap has not been explained. A much higher Successful: count on the completion screen than the downloadable results spreadsheet reports has also been seen and is a known display issue. On larger mass updates, the on-screen completion total and the completion email can also show a row count with an extra trailing zero, such as 1,230 rows shown as 12,300; this has not been seen to affect what was actually processed. When the numbers disagree, trust the per-record rows in the results spreadsheet.
The Completion Email
| Aspect | Behavior |
|---|---|
| How to get it | Leave Send me an email with the results of this mass update (or mass delete) ticked on the preview step |
| Default | Ticked and addressed to you. You can type another address in Completion Email |
| Contents | The success, no-change, error, and total counts, plus a link to the results spreadsheet |
| Previews | Never emailed |
| When it is not sent | Rhythm does not send the email if the option was unticked, the address was mistyped, or the run stopped on an error or its time limit before finishing. When the run stops before finishing, no results spreadsheet is produced either. |
The email goes only to the address you give; nobody else is told the operation ran.
Keep Your Copies
Rhythm stores preview and results files by record type and date. A later preview or run of the same record type on the same day replaces the earlier file, so a link you opened earlier then shows the newer file. If you run more than one operation on the same record type in the same day, download each preview or results spreadsheet to your computer as soon as that run finishes, before you start the next one. Otherwise, an earlier link can end up showing the newer file instead of the one you meant to keep. Download both spreadsheets and keep them with your records. They contain member data, so store and share them as you would any member list.
The preview is also your only record of prior values; there is no undo. See How Bulk Changes Work.