S3 Bulk Export Job Failing with 403 on WebChat Legal Hold Metadata

General Discussion
1

Stuck on a problem and need help troubleshooting a persistent issue with our bulk export jobs for WebChat interactions. We are processing a legal discovery request that requires specific chain of custody metadata to be preserved in the S3 bucket. The export job is initiated via the v2/recordings/bulkexport endpoint, targeting interactions tagged with x-amz-meta-legal-hold: true in the Architect flow.

The job status transitions to FAILED shortly after initiation. The error log in the export job details shows a generic 403 Forbidden error, but the stack trace points to the S3 upload step, specifically when the system attempts to write the metadata headers. The recordings themselves (audio files for voice, transcript JSON for WebChat) upload successfully if we remove the legal hold tag, suggesting the issue is isolated to the metadata handling or IAM permissions on the S3 bucket policy regarding custom headers.

We are using the Genesys Cloud REST API directly from a Python script (boto3 for S3 verification). The environment is EU-West-1. The S3 bucket policy allows s3:PutObject and s3:PutObjectAcl, but we are unsure if there is a specific permission required for the custom metadata keys used by the legal hold feature. The audit trail shows the interaction was tagged correctly in Architect, but the export job drops the tag during the transfer.

  • Verified that the S3 bucket policy explicitly allows s3:PutObject with the x-amz-meta-legal-hold header, and confirmed via AWS CloudTrail that the request is reaching the bucket but being denied.
  • Tested the export with a subset of WebChat interactions without the legal hold tag; these exports completed successfully with all standard metadata preserved, confirming the core integration is functional.

Is there a known limitation with the v2/recordings/bulkexport endpoint regarding custom metadata on digital channels? Or is this likely an IAM policy issue on the AWS side that we are missing? Any insights from others handling similar legal discovery workflows would be appreciated.

2

This happens because the Bulk Export API excluding custom metadata fields like x-amz-meta-legal-hold from the initial manifest generation. The system prioritizes standard recording attributes, ignoring custom tags set in Architect flows during the export staging phase.

To resolve this, you must ensure the legal hold status is captured within the interaction’s core metadata or use a post-export script to tag the S3 objects based on the exported JSON manifest. The API does not natively propagate custom headers to the S3 storage layer during bulk operations.