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Hello,
Do we have any way to change the timeout value of Call an action node in power virtual agent. Sometimes power automate flow runs more than 2 mins to get a response, in such scenarios bot shows error message to user FlowActionTimedOut. Checked the properties and other forums doesn't find a solution, please provide your comments. Bot is using teams as a channel.
Thanks.
We are also facing this issue and getting error after (approx 2 minutes) and seems like PVA times out just before the response is received from LLM. Error is also confusing and does not indicate any proper reason.
Error from PVA: Sorry, something went wrong. Error code: SystemError. Conversation ID: b5093709-9fee-4927-8e51-92f3a4137d91. Time (UTC): 3/28/2024 12:48:27 PM.
In our case, we have an http call which calls LLM (AzureOpenAI) and it takes little over 2 minutes and depending on the model and data, it can take even more time but normally request gets processed within 3 minutes. We can see in our application log that LLM is sending the response and before that response goes to PVA, PVA is showing above error. It seems like PVA gives this error if response is not received in 100 seconds or 2 minute (not exactly sure for PVA timeout value as could not find in PVA documentation).
Using PVA with LLM will practically take more time depending on data and model used. In our case, all the services are used from Microsoft Azure OpenAI and if Microsoft thinks that PVA should get response within 100 seconds then you should optimize LLM response in Azure to be faster. If you restrict user to not allow to change this timeout value then PVA is truely useless for many usecases and Microsoft should clearly indicate in bold letters that the response has to come in 100 seconds or do not use PVA as it is wasting lot of development time and customers gets frustrated. Also error should clearly indicate the reason and should not be generic message.
We found one setting in http request setting for request timeout as per attached screenshot and we have also configured it to 3 minutes but it does not seem to be using that setting. Is that a bug in that setting? what is the use of that setting?
I hope someone from copilot studio team can provide quick answer here. Thanks in advance.
Hi, @Nicer_Atl . You're correct in that currently there's no way to extend the 100 seconds, but even when kicking off long-running jobs, like a Power Automate Desktop flow, for example, you can still return values to Power Virtual agents and then continue processing the rest of what happens in Power Automate. This allows you to at least initiate a long-running job, let the user know the request has been processed, and then, upon completion, you can use another method like an email, Teams IM, etc. to notify them once its complete. While it's not ideal, I do think that's a preferred user experience for something that takes several minutes to run, as I don't see most users being willing to wait on a bot for 4-5 minutes to respond.
Cheers,
Matt
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Cheers,
Matt
As we think of more useful ways to utilize PVA, there will certainly be more instances where the bot needs to wait longer. In my example, my Power Automate node has to execute a 'Do while' action..... and it takes time.
The suggestion here seems to be, find a way to do it in less than 100 secs or else you are SOL.... or I should say, or else you will have to use aka.ms/CopilotStudioImplementationGuide to excuse the inability. 😬
Hi @gargiul1 --
The timeout of 100s for a flow to run can't be extended in Copilot Studio, but I would suggest you consider alternative ways to read your Excel file to address the performance issues you are seeing. See this: Fastest Way To Read Large Excel Table In Power Automate (matthewdevaney.com) by MVP @mdevaney
Also, the aka.ms/CopilotStudioImplementationGuide contains 2 slides with patterns on how to more gracefully manage these timeout errors in your chatbots.
Henry
Hi all,
I have the same problem, I get a timeout error trying to return to a chat bot in Teams the result of an flow action.
My flow has to read an excel of ONLY(!!!) 90 (nine-zero) rows and 10 (one-zero) columns.
I've tried to parallelize, I didn't get the timeout error but the message returned to the bot is composed by some sentences that are not in the correct oreder (most likely it is an effect of the parallelization).
If Microsoft wants that people use this tecnology, I hope Microsoft thinks to improve such kind of performance, it is assolutely not acceptable that it needs more 2 minutes to read this very little number of records, an human performs better.
Otherwise it remains an unuseful software.
Regards
Antonio
I actually blogged about this recently. The timeout actually occurs at exactly 100 seconds, and in my blog post I recommend a parallel pattern where you use a Delay action to determine if the flow is going to time out. If it is, you can return an error message to the user before it does, and you could use the Teams action in Power Automate to deliver an "offline" message from the bot to the user, via the "Chat with bot" option in the action (or via Flow bot if you're using the unified canvas, since it can't currently utilize the "Chat with bot" option), once your flow is complete.
Find this post helpful? Please mark it as the solution and/or provide kudos so that it will help others in the future.
Cheers,
Matt
Hi @ManikandanS
For the FlowActionTimedOut error, you can't increase the timeout.
However, here's what we recommend:
Henry
@MattJimison @HenryJammes - Any comments on above?
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