Overview
Have you received alert notifications like the below?
Your org has met the maximum number of API calls. The API threshold can be adjusted by Outreach admins in settings >> plugins >> limits or you can wait 24 hours for your API calls to reset.
This article provides information to Outreach admins regarding best practices in reducing API call usage to avoid unnecessarily approaching and surpassing the thresholds that result in such errors.
Intended Audience:
- Outreach Admins
Notes:
- This article discusses some best practices in reducing API Call Usage. For more information on API call usage, refer to the API Call Usage Overview.
How To Reduce API Call Usage
Outreach uses API calls to transfer data from Outreach to Salesforce and vice versa. If you've been hitting your API limit a lot lately, the following practices may help.
Inbound API Call Usage
Inbound API Call Usages are data transfers originating from the Salesforce instance and pushing to the Outreach Platform.
Each time there is a change to a mapped field in Salesforce, Outreach will notice the change during the polling process. If you can reduce the amount of updates that occur on the Lead, Contact, and Account objects in Salesforce, you will reduce the amount of API calls used when Outreach pulls changed data into Outreach.
Review the following settings to determine if the influx in API call volume can be better managed.
Reduce Polling Frequency
The more often Outreach polls Salesforce for changes, the more API calls Outreach will use. By reducing the polling frequency (increasing how often Outreach polls Salesforce for updates) can reduce the amount of API calls used.
Note: The polling frequency is set to 10 minutes out of box.
For more information on changing the polling frequency in Outreach, refer to the applicable Advanced Task Mapping article.
Create Polling Conditions
The amount of information polled is significant as well. The more records Outreach is polling from Salesforce, the more API calls will get used. Applying polling conditions will set parameters for Outreach to operate in and return only records that meet the configured criteria.
For example: Applying a polling condition where Outreach only polls Salesforce for Leads who have an Account Owner, will use a lesser amount of API calls than polling Salesforce for all Leads.
Polling Conditions allow Outreach to poll specific records in Salesforce. Applying polling conditions will limit the amount of records Outreach checks for changes thus limiting API call usage.
Only map the fields you need in Outreach
Reducing the amount of field mappings on Leads, Contacts, and Accounts will transfer less information, using less API calls as a result.
Only Bring in Necessary Prospects into Outreach
If you don't plan on working the Lead in Outreach, then there is no need to bring that Lead or Contact into the Platform. You can add conditions for Inbound Create to prevent importing and syncing unnecessary Prospects in the Platform. For more information regarding Inbound Create, refer to the CRM Integration Toggles (Explained) article.
Outbound API Call Usage
Leave Message Opens and Clicks Off
Each open/click will push one new activity to the Lead/Contact's activity feed and uses one API call each time. It is more user-friendly to view this information in Outreach and it will save API calls.
Apply Conditions to Outbound Create
Outreach recommends Outbound create be disabled unless needed for as a workflow requirement and if the conditions match your Salesforce validations.
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