Right. We’re seeing Lambda Data Actions triggered by an Architect flow timeout - but not consistently. The function itself-arn:aws:lambda:eu-central-1:123456789012:function:gc-transcript-processor-is set to 10s timeout, and the flow’s timeout is 30s.
It’s failing with a 502 Bad Gateway in the Genesys Cloud console, but CloudWatch logs show execution durations of maybe 2-3 seconds before the timeout. Is anyone else seeing this? We’re on Genesys Cloud v2.0 and the Data Action is configured to send the full transcript to S3.
We’ve had to add a CloudFormation stack to retry failed events, but that’s just masking something fundamentally wrong. A simple test function, doing jack all except logging, times out as expected at 10s. So, it’s not the Lambda itself.
Okay, this is hitting a spot we saw a lot when we moved our transcription pipeline over from Zendesk’s Sunshine Conversations API - the Lambda timeouts felt arbitrary, even when the execution time was well under the limit.
It’s likely the 502 is a bit misleading - it’s often GC’s way of signaling that the Data Action didn’t complete within the flow’s overall timeout, even if the Lambda itself finished quickly. Think about it like Zendesk’s triggers - if a trigger takes too long, the whole ticket update can just… fail, and you get a similar kind of error.
A workaround we found was to adjust the Data Action’s “maximum wait time” setting within the Architect flow itself. It’s separate from the Lambda’s configured timeout, and allows you to extend how long the flow will wait for the Data Action to respond. We bumped it up to 20 seconds, which fixed intermittent failures. There was a post a while back-I think it was around January-about this exact scenario, someone had a similar issue with a custom reporting endpoint. You’ll find it if you search for “Data Action timeout”.
Also, double-check the Lambda’s memory allocation - sometimes, it’s not execution time, but available resources causing the issue.
right, yeah, that 502 is a red herring. we saw this at my last shop - it’s GC’s way of saying ‘i timed out waiting for your thing’.
Cause:
The flow timeout is almost certainly the culprit, even if the lambda itself is quick. GC’s Data Action integration isn’t great at handling async stuff. It kinda just… waits. It’s not a true event-driven model, despite what anyone tells you. Could be that the lambda starts fast but then has some downstream calls that take time - hitting another API, writing to a database, whatever. GC doesn’t care, it just sees the Data Action block hanging.
Solution:
Try setting the Data Action’s “Maximum Wait Time” to something higher than 30s - maybe 60s, even 90s. It’s in the Data Action configuration screen in GC. Also - and this is important - make sure you aren’t doing anything before the Data Action that’s eating up time. At my last shop we had a looping condition that was adding a bunch of latency.
If that doesn’t fix it, you might need to look at async processing inside the lambda. Like, queue up a message to SQS or something and let that handle the long-running part. You’d need something else to monitor that queue though, because GC won’t tell you if the SQS job eventually fails. Might be wrong but, I’m betting the flow timeout is the biggest problem. Also, check the Data Action logs in GC - they aren’t super helpful, but sometimes they’ll give a hint.
Apologies if this is a basic question. How do I adjust the flow timeout setting to resolve this issue? We’ve noticed that the data action is failing sometimes, and the error message is not very clear.
The earlier reply mentions that the flow timeout is probably the problem, even if the Lambda function itself is completing quickly. Is it possible to increase the flow timeout? I’m not sure how to access this setting in the Genesys Cloud interface.
We’ve tried increasing the Lambda function timeout to 15 seconds, but the 502 error is still happening. It seems to be related to the time the system waits for the data action to complete.
Could you please tell me which section I need to go to in Architect to modify this timeout? We have several flows using data actions, so I want to be sure I am making the correct change. It’s also possible the timeout is not the correct approach, but we don’t have much experience with this type of integration.
yeah that 502 is a pain, right? the earlier post’s spot on - it’s GC waiting, not really a Lambda issue.
you can bump the flow timeout, but it’s kinda hidden. You’ll want to edit the flow, then go to Flow Properties - it’s that little gear icon in the top right. There’s a Timeout (seconds) field there. Try bumping it up to 60 or even 90, just to see if it solves things.
But… and this is just a hunch… you might also wanna look at what the Lambda is doing inside those first 2-3 seconds. Are there any other API calls happening? We ran into a similar thing where the Lambda was kicking off a contact list sync, which then had its own timeout.
Side note: if you’re pulling data from a list, are you checking the DNC status inside the Lambda? Just making sure you’re covered there.
Also, can you confirm what region your architect flow is running in? I know it sounds silly but we had a similar 502 a while ago when we were pointing to the wrong edge.
If you’re comfortable sharing a snippet of the flow JSON, I can take a look too. It’s hard to say for sure without seeing the setup.