Got many timeout errors recently.

Etienne Mermillod

Hi,

I am extensivly using the api for years (using the C# sdk) , and in the pasts month i get more an more error relative to timeouts:

Server timeout exceeded. Request has failed. at Smartsheet.Api.Internal.AbstractResources.HandleError(HttpResponse response)
at Smartsheet.Api.Internal.AbstractResources.UpdateResource[T](String path, Type objectClass, T object)
at Smartsheet.Api.Internal.SheetColumnResourcesImpl.UpdateColumn(Int64 sheetId, Column column)

Is there any way to undertsand why, theses random errors appears, and if any action will be done by smartsheet ?

Julio S.

Hi @Etienne Mermillod,

There aren't any known limitations on the number of dropdown options that a column can contain. In this post, Paul reports having used up to 15,000 values.

If you'd need to have this investigated in depth and you haven't done already, I would recommend reporting this to our Support team through the link I provided in previous reply.

Cheers!

Julio

Julio S.

Hi @Etienne Mermillod,

At the moment, there is nothing reported in the Status site (https://status.smartsheet.com/) that suggests that these errors are affecting the API as a whole nor have I found any reports of similar events during the last month.

There are multiple causes why timeout errors can occur, but generally speaking, these are more prone to happen when advanced functionality such as column formulas, cell linking, conditional formatting etc is heavily used within the sheet. You may want to have a look at System requirements and guidelines for using Smartsheet for further details on Smartsheet current limitations and Issue: My sheet is slow to load for some tips on how to reduce a sheet complexity.

If you believe that your sheet complexity isn't the cause for these events and you haven't done it yet, I would recommend opening a ticket with our Support team via this form. Please make sure to include as much detail as possible regarding the affected sheets and the specific API calls that seem to trigger these errors.

I hope this can be of help.

Cheers!

Julio

Etienne Mermillod

So my sheet size is around 13mo, and i am trying to update a column options.

Most of the time th call is failing, but sometimes it's working. @Julio S. , is there any formal limitation on the sheet size or limits somewhere ?

That specific column needs to have around 300 options, wich is a lot i agree but isn't very exptionnal.

Finnally, i also changed the server timeout settings on my side of the api but it doens't have any effect.

Julio S.

Hi @Etienne Mermillod,

There aren't any known limitations on the number of dropdown options that a column can contain. In this post, Paul reports having used up to 15,000 values.

If you'd need to have this investigated in depth and you haven't done already, I would recommend reporting this to our Support team through the link I provided in previous reply.

Cheers!

Julio

JeremiahHorstick

Hi,

We have recently tested the number of dropdown options maxing at 20,000 (without issue)

Regarding the timeout, in the past few years we have seen this twice.

Sheets containing a large number of links and formulae get completely re-loaded during an API call which is what I believe causes the time-out.

-Jeremiah

zsiegel

I am also experiencing many request timeouts for large sheets using the Smartsheet API (usually via the Python SDK).

The error response says 'Retry using exponential backoff' with ' "shouldRetry": true'.

Of course I can implement exponential backoff on my end, but in my experience it takes many attempts for a successful request to modify this sheet. This means if we implement exponential backoff, our tools will be unacceptably slow.

Does the Smartsheet SLA cover API usage? It claims to cover the "Core Application". Our Smartsheet usage depends heavily in critical ways on the API and while some arbitrary measurement of "availability per calendar month" (how do you measure the "minutes" lost due to a failure during critical usage?) may still meet the SLA, I feel that Smartsheet is failing to function properly and that some measures should be taken to address this.

The SLA mentions that a fee credit is the "Sole Remedy" for SLA violations, but I think software improvements on Smartsheet's end (e.g. Smartsheet retrying transactions or specifying a longer timeout interval for requests), or hardware improvements (e.g. provisioning more server resources when responses are slow) are necessary for Smartsheet.

I will file a separate support request.