Document Common Errors and Tricks of the Trade

The world of APIs is very much like that since every product will have a different API, even Gainsight’s APIs are different between features.  In most cases documentation is gospel but sometimes the API will give good error messages in the console log. 

I don’t think it would be a bad idea to have more examples but common troubleshooting could be difficult since there are so many variables into what can cause a request to fail.  If you check the console in Postman are you able to see any errors?

No, it’s just a common 500 Internal Server Error.

@spencer_engel The 500 Internal Server Error messages are easy ... they indicate you have done something wrong ;) I must admit, Gainsight APIs have a rather steep learning curve, which is why I ran an API course at Pulse in 2022. I believe that our Gainsight Education team turned that into a course, but it looks like you have already reached out to our education team (Vivek)!

If you’d like, you are welcome to post some of your examples and this community can help troubleshoot them with you.

Note: I hardly ever run a collection unless I am performing a bulk update … I run individual requests for testing. Also, it’s not often I run across something that works one day and doesn’t work another (this usually indicates the issue is data-related). 

FYI - Here's a Timeline UPDATE (using POSTMAN parameters) …

PUT https://{{DOMAIN_NAME}}.gainsightcloud.com/v1/ant/es/activity?identifier=Gsid

{
  "records": [
    {
        "ContextName": "Company",
        "TypeName": "Meeting",
        "Gsid": "{{TIMELINE_EXTERNALID}}",
        "Subject": "External API demo 1",
        "ActivityDate": "2022-06-15T00:00:00.000+08:00",
        "Notes": "Timeline entry created via API",
        "author": "probson@gainsight.com",
        "companyName": "{{COMPANY_NAME}}",
        "internalAttendees": [
            "training@gainsight.com"
        ],
        "externalAttendees": [
            "[Your Name from the Person record you created earlier]"
        ]
}
],
  "lookups": {
    "GsCompanyId": {
      "fields": {
        "companyName": "Name"
      },
      "lookupField": "Gsid",
      "objectName": "Company",
      "multiMatchOption": "FIRSTMATCH",
      "onNoMatch": "ERROR"
    },
    "AuthorId": {
      "fields": {
        "author": "Email"
      },
      "lookupField": "Gsid",
      "objectName": "GsUser",
      "multiMatchOption": "FIRSTMATCH",
      "onNoMatch": "ERROR"
    },
    "InternalAttendees": {
        "fields": {
            "internalAttendees": "Email"
        },
        "lookupField": "Gsid",
        "objectName": "GsUser",
         "multiMatchOption": "FIRSTMATCH"
    },
    "ExternalAttendees": {
        "fields": {
            "externalAttendees": "Person_ID__gr.Name",
            "GsCompanyId": "Company_ID"
        },
        "lookupField": "Gsid",
        "objectName": "Company_Person",
        "multiMatchOption": "FIRSTMATCH"
    }    
  }
}

 

Thanks, Peter. And yes, I’ll definitely be taking the next course you run to get more in-depth training. It turns out my issues were actually Postman related - i.e. I hit an API limit. Since I posted this, I got quite a bit of help from GS Support and am in better shape than I was just a few days ago. Thanks again!

I agree with Peter. I only use postman, or more often talend as I think it is more user friendly, to test my API calls. Once I have it to a point it is working I then transfer to GS and run my APIs from event framworks. I never bulk/mass run API calls, unless I am need to export things like dashbaord permissions, then postman is handy.

One thing to note is something GS error handling in event framework when running a test call is better than using postman/talend. Why is this? I imagine GS has some things built out to interrupt their own error codes.