How failed journey actions are retried
Overview
Sometimes, action shapes in a journey may fail for various reasons. Instead of marking them as failed right away, they are automatically retried up to 12 times. Learn more about how these retries work below.
Possible reasons for failures
Action shapes may fail for these reasons:
- Data source shape (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive): Temporary issues with the external app, often due to hitting its rate limits.
- Webhook shape: If your webhook service responds with an error code between 400 and 599 (except for 400, 401, 403, 404, and 405).
How failures are retried
Failures are automatically retried up to 12 times, with increasing intervals between each attempt. See the table below for details.
Attempt | Time since the last attempt | Time since the first attempt |
|---|---|---|
1 | n/a (first attempt) | 0 minutes |
2 | 5 minutes | 5 minutes |
3 | 15 minutes | 20 minutes |
4 | 1 hour | 1 hour and 20 minutes |
5 | 5 hours | 6 hours and 20 minutes |
6 | 24 hours | 1 day, 6 hours, and 20 minutes |
7 | 24 hours | 2 days, 6 hours, and 20 minutes |
8 | 24 hours | 3 days, 6 hours, and 20 minutes |
9 | 24 hours | 4 days, 6 hours, and 20 minutes |
10 | 24 hours | 5 days, 6 hours, and 20 minutes |
11 | 24 hours | 6 days, 6 hours, and 20 minutes |
12 | 24 hours | 7 days, 6 hours, and 20 minutes |
During retry attempts, the contact will stay in the action shape until the action is successfully processed or it reaches 12 failed attempts and times out. This may delay the processing of later shapes in the journey.
