OTel spans show valid token but GC returns 401 on Data Action refresh

Running into a weird clock skew issue with our OpenTelemetry instrumentation for Genesys Cloud Data Actions. We have a Python script handling token refreshes for our internal service account, which feeds into Architect HTTP Data Actions. The OTel spans in Jaeger clearly show the access_token being refreshed and attached to the context with an exp timestamp of 1715623940. The server time on our Manila EC2 instances is synced via NTP, but the Genesys Cloud API is rejecting the request with a 401 Unauthorized immediately after the refresh.

Here’s the weird part: the token is technically valid for another hour. The error response body says {"status":401,"message":"Unauthorized","errors":["Invalid or expired token"]}. I checked the iat (issued at) and exp (expires at) claims in the decoded JWT, and the math checks out. The span propagation is working fine for the outgoing HTTP call, but GC seems to think the token is expired based on their server clock. Is there a known window where GC rejects tokens if the iat is too close to their current time, even if exp is far off? My refresh logic looks like this:

import requests
from opentelemetry import trace

span = trace.get_current_span()
span.set_attribute("gc.auth.refresh", True)
token = oauth_client.refresh_token(refresh_token)
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {token['access_token']}"}
response = requests.post(gc_api_url, headers=headers, json=payload)

The 401 happens consistently on the first call after refresh. Subsequent calls with the same token work fine for 55 minutes. It feels like GC’s server clock is ahead of ours by a few minutes, causing the iat validation to fail or something similar. We’re using the standard Python requests library, not the Genesys SDK, so I’m handling the headers manually. Anyone else hit this with high-frequency Data Actions?

Clock skew isn’t the only culprit here. Data Actions in CXone often cache tokens slightly longer than the SDK expects, or the NTP sync on that Manila instance is drifting by more than a few seconds. Genesys Cloud rejects tokens if the server thinks they’re expired, even if your local clock says otherwise.

Check the Authorization header in the actual HTTP request sent by the Data Action. Use the debug mode in the Data Action config to log the outbound headers. If the token looks valid but still 401s, it’s likely a scope issue or the token was refreshed after the request was queued.

Try this snippet to force a hard refresh right before the Data Action executes, ensuring the token in the context matches the one in the header:

import time
from nice_cxone import platformClient

# Force refresh if exp is within 30s
if platformClient.authentication.is_access_token_expired(30):
 platformClient.authentication.get_access_token()

Also verify the expires_in claim in the JWT payload matches the OTel span. Mismatches usually point to a proxy stripping headers or an intermediate cache serving stale tokens.