RG Email Sidebar and Salesforce API Calls Limit¶

For users of the Email Sidebar on:

5 min read

Note

In the latest RG Email Sidebar updates, a new global setting was introduced to RGES configuration that allows reducing of API calls generated by RGES Sync. Contact Revenue Grid support team for more information about the feature. Note that presently the feature is only available upon request

RG Email Sidebar interacts with Salesforce by sending user-initiated as well as automatically generated requests to Salesforce servers via Salesforce API (API calls) and receiving their responses. There is a limitation on the number of incoming API calls Salesforce processes per 24 hours and to prevent this limit being reached by users having a vast amount of Salesforce objects in sync, RG Email Sidebar has a mechanism limiting the amount of Salesforce API calls it sends automatically on synchronization sessions.

If the internal RG Email Sidebar API calls limit is reached, you will get a throttling error notification ” Salesforce API calls minimal threshold exceeded ({actual %%} with limit of {limit %%}), synchronization will be retried later” on your sync dashboard; your current sync session will be terminated, and the following sessions’ sync interval will be progressively increased from 30 minutes to 2.5 – 4.5 – 6.5 – … hours until RG Email Sidebar determines that there are enough Salesforce API calls available; then the regular 30 minute synchronization cycle will be resumed automatically. The “minimal threshold exceeded …” error is triggered and Revenue Grid synchronization is semi-suspended well in advance before Salesforce API calls limit is about to be reached, so any other applications generating Salesforce API calls will continue running unaffected.

Important

Please note that you still can effectively use the RG Email Sidebar Add-In / Chrome Extension to work with Salesforce (e.g. search or create records) and save email messages (but not events) from your email client to Salesforce by saving emails in Salesforce manually from Read mode after synchronization has been suspended due to the daily API calls internal (RG Email Sidebar imposed) limit reached. But if the overall (Salesforce imposed) API calls limit is reached, no interaction between the Add-In / Chrome Extension and Salesforce is possible

In case you are working with a vast amount of Salesforce records daily, or use multiple integrations / customizations and start getting the throttling sync error, you can reduce the amount of API calls by adjusting the following RG Email Sidebar settings defining the sync scope:

Set additional filters applied on Contacts synchronization - syncing several hundred contacts may generate many API calls
Disable auto-syncing of calendar items or emails - so saving of calendar items and emails will be more selective and require less server-to-server processing
Possibly completely remove certain unused object types from synchronization by toggling corresponding switches

If that does not help, another way to prevent the daily API calls internal limit being reached is to increase your sync interval (by default it is set to one sync session per 30 minutes): less frequent synchronization sessions generate proportionally less API calls. Contact us by email to our Support team to request that.

In addition, if the API calls limit is reached on Salesforce side, considering that the standard limit is sufficient for most RG Email Sidebar users, it is recommended that your local Salesforce admin check for other applications which also use Salesforce API: perhaps some of the apps which generate Salesforce API calls and are not regularly used can be disabled. That would allot Revenue Grid synchronization more API calls. Salesforce offers a tool for overviewing API calls amounts sent by different apps that can be used to allocate API calls among RG Email Sidebar and other apps you are running.

Dependency Between Sync Scope / Records Updates Count and the Amount of API Calls Generated¶

When estimating the daily amount of Salesforce API calls sent by RG Email Sidebar you can take into consideration the following factors:

A daily amount of up to 1,500 Salesforce API calls (10% of the standard limit in Salesforce) is generated to maintain synchronization and is not involved in conveying records modifications, being idle sync API calls. This amount will be practically the same regardless of the overall amount of records synced in Salesforce (synchronization scope)
The scope of records updates carried out on sync sessions may significantly affect the amount of Salesforce API calls sent. Depending on the nature of a record update (e.g. updating several fields of a single record vs. modifying series of recurring events), it may require from 1 to 10 API calls per modification. For your estimates you can assume that on average 3% of all records in Salesforce get updated per 24 hours, and this requires a certain additional amount of API calls to be sent

Tip

Additionally, refer to this article to learn more about API call monitoring in Salesforce.

Basic API calls consumption (saving from mailbox to Salesforce)¶

This is the approximate calculation of API calls consumption for a standard (“vanilla”) configuration. The API calls number may vary significantly if configuration changes are made or additional features are enabled.

In this calculation, email recipients and meeting attendees are already created as records in Salesforce (Contacts or Leads) and the auto-creation of Leads and Contacts is disabled. Two saving methods are considered – auto-saving (by RG Sync Engine) and manual saving (using the Save button in the Add-in)

API calls consumption by the basic actions and processes:

Saving 1 email with 1 attachment sent to 1 recipient

Automatically – 14
Manually – 15

Saving 1 email with 1 attachment sent to 2 recipients

Automatically – 14
Manually – 15

Saving 1 calendar calendar item (Appointment) with 1 attendee (who is an Organizer)

Automatically – 3
Manually – 5

Saving 1 calendar calendar item (Meeting) with 2 attendees (including Organizer)

Automatically – 6
Manually – 6

RG Email Sidebar and other sync software¶

Please note that when you are using RG Email Sidebar there should be no other software running that performs data transfer between MS Exchange and Salesforce API (e.g. Salesforce Lightning sync, Salesforce Inbox, Salesforce for Outlook, etc.) Running different MS Exchange – Salesforce sync applications simultaneously will cause sync conflicts and items duplication. If you encounter this kind of unexpected behavior, please check that with your Salesforce admin or, if you are a local Salesforce admin, check for such software in the following places:

Note that apps which use Salesforce API but do not exchange data specifically between Salesforce and MS Exchange will not cause sync conflicts.

API Calls Limits Adjustment¶

If no other solution works in your configuration, you can request our Support team to adjust the global settings which define API calls limits:

SalesForceAPICallMinCount - total generated API calls number count. As soon as it is reached, RGES Sync stops generating API calls

SalesForceAPICallMinPercent - RG Email Sidebar API calls percentage among all Salesforce API calls. As soon as it is reached, RGES Sync stops generating API calls