Recording Export - Intermittent 404 Not Found

Hi all,

We’re encountering an intermittent issue with the recording export API. Specifically, attempting to retrieve the recording media is returning a 404 Not Found error on roughly fifteen percent of requests. It’s proving difficult to reproduce consistently, but the failure rate is impacting automated processing of audio files for voice biometric analysis.

The recordings in question are generated via the Genesys Cloud recording functionality - standard call recordings, nothing custom there. These exports are initiated from an Architect flow using the “Export Recording” activity. The activity is configured to export the full recording in WAV format. It’s worth noting that the flow itself seems to execute without error - the “Export Recording” activity completes successfully, but subsequent attempts to retrieve the media using the API fail.

The recording IDs themselves appear valid. When manually inspecting the recordings list within the Genesys Cloud interface, the recordings are present and playable. The API call is being made using the recording ID returned by the “Export Recording” activity.

Initial investigation suggests the issue may relate to propagation delay - perhaps the recording isn’t fully processed and available for export immediately after the “Export Recording” activity completes. We’ve implemented a retry mechanism with exponential backoff in the Architect flow, delaying the API call by up to five minutes, but this has only reduced the failure rate to approximately eight percent. It hasn’t eliminated the problem.

The SDK version being used for the API requests is current as of today - the latest available at the time of writing. We’ve also confirmed the user account used for the API requests has the necessary permissions - recording access and permissions to view recordings are both granted.

A workaround that’s been tested - though not ideal for a fully automated process - is to wait ten minutes before initiating the API call. This seems to resolve the issue in most cases, but it’s hardly a scalable solution. We’ve reviewed the documentation regarding recording exports and the expected latency, but there’s limited detail concerning potential propagation delays.

Has anyone experienced similar behavior? Any insight into the underlying cause, or perhaps alternative approaches to ensure successful recording export? The consistency is the real challenge here.

The 404s suggest a race condition between recording completion and media availability - the API call is likely hitting before the media segment is fully processed and indexed. You’ll need to implement a retry mechanism with exponential backoff, but don’t just blindly re-request. Instead, poll the recording’s state field. Pseudo-code for the retry logic:

function get_recording_media(recordingId, max_retries=5, backoff_factor=2.0):
 retry_count = 0
 while retry_count < max_retries:
 response = GET recording details
 if response.state == "completed":
 media_response = GET recording media
 if media_response.status_code == 200:
 return media_response.content
 else:
 log "Media retrieval failed with status code: {media_response.status_code}"
 break # Give up if media retrieval fails after state is completed
 else:
 log "Recording not yet completed. State: {response.state}"
 wait(backoff_factor * (2 ** retry_count)) # exponential backoff
 retry_count += 1
 return None # Or raise an exception after max retries

That approach mitigates the immediate 404 issue. However, consider the underlying transcription accuracy if this impacts your voice biometric analysis pipeline. We’ve found that a 15% failure rate in retrieval corresponds to roughly a 3-5% increase in Word Error Rate (WER) on the resulting transcript - and that’s assuming the segments that do retrieve are clean. For reference, Opus codec (RFC 6716) yields a WER of 5-8% under normal conditions, so you want to minimize these upstream failures. Consider adjusting the recording retention policy to allow additional processing time before initiating export, if feasible.

The recordings are sourced from both inbound and outbound legs - that detail was omitted in my initial post. We’ve confirmed the 404s occur regardless of the call direction, suggesting it’s not specific to one type of recording process. Polling the state field is a sensible approach; we’ll incorporate that into our retry logic immediately.

genesys-cloud-sdk’s recording API has always been flaky. That’s right, and also the state field isn’t always reliable - we’ve seen it report completed while the media still isn’t available.

Try adding a header Accept: application/octet-stream to your request - sometimes it helps force the download. Here’s an example:

GET [recording media endpoint] HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/octet-stream