Sharepoint Workflow error

Question

Any idea why a workflow would suspend its work by presenting:

"RequestorId: ***. Details: The instance has exceeded the outbound http request quota for a 1.00:00:00 time period. The 5000 request limit was reached in 02:00:59.5931606." ?

Thank you!

Gabi

[PII is masked by the moderator]

Answer 1

Hi Gabi,

You were experiencing workflow service throttling then. Throttling is performed to allow for fair resource usage. It also protects the environment from harmful workflows and workflows that don’t follow best practices. Workflow throttling is dynamic and will be reevaluated periodically by workflow scope and by workflow service back end.

The Workflow service also limits the number of outbound requests that a single workflow instance can generate. In a 24-hour period, a single workflow instance can generate up to 5,000 outbound requests. After 5,000 outbound requests are generated in a 24-hour period, the workflow is suspended by the Workflow service. The Workflow Status page for the workflow will contain information about the suspended workflow. In this scenario, the information balloon for the Internal Status will display the following message:

The instance has exceeded the outbound http request quota for a 1.00:00:00 time period. The 5000 request limit was reached in <time>.

Note: The <time> placeholder represents the time that it took to reach the 5,000 request limit for your workflow.

You can resume the suspended workflow instance by clicking Resume for the workflow after 24 hours have passed. This must occur before the workflow is terminated.

For more information, please check the below articles:

Avoid getting throttled or blocked in SharePoint Online

SharePoint 2013 workflow throttling and performance in SharePoint Online and Project Online

Thanks,

Tina

Answer 2

Is this limitation still present when using a Flow instead of a SharePoint Designer workflow?

Answer 3

Hi Tina,

Does this mean that if we use the UserAgent string header in our REST call from within SharePoint Designer (with the convention described in the article on throttling -- NONISV/CompanyName/Application/Version), that will get us around this limitation?

Thanks,

Dave

Answer 4

Hi Gabi,

Have you checked the information above about workflow service throttling? Let us know if you need further assistance.

Thanks,

Tina