Twitter Posts & Status 429

[tthompsonesri]

Hey Powerusers,

I've been running an MS flow for about the past 2 months, posting anywhere between 1 to 10 tweets a day. Recently, as of Oct 22nd, I'm beginning to see these flows fail. The body response and status code are as follows:

{
  "status": 429,
  "message": "This operation is rate limited by Twitter. Follow Twitter guidelines as given here: https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/rate-limits.\r\nclientRequestId: dd21f737-b2ef-4819-89a5-1c45e8ddf855\r\nserviceRequestId: 8c38789158d886e033111b0c63d5f1e6;243256cb86dbefa9c4841312b919076a",
  "source": "twitter-ce.azconn-ce.p.azurewebsites.net"
}

I've done research on the Twitter API regarding rate limits on posts, and I cannot find anything specific related to MS Flow, or its rate limit time interval. The closest I found was this: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/rate-limiting.html and https://twittercommunity.com/t/rate-limit-for-post-statuses-update/31411 where a Twitter Staff member mentions that its 2,400 tweets per day, broken down into 15 minute intervals. 

We're coming nowhere near close to this limit, at best we post 2 tweets every 15 minutes but its usually 1 an hour. 

Could this be an issue related specifically to the MS Flow Twitter connector? Why suddenly are we running into this issue after several months of this working in production?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Tom

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @tthompsonesri,

First check the details and limitations of the Twitter connector:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/twitter/

The following are some of the limits and restrictions:

1. Maximum number of connections per user: 2
2. API call rate limit for POST operation: 12 per hour
3. API call rate limit for other operations: 600 per hour
4. Frequency of trigger polls: 60 seconds
5. Maximum size of image upload: 5 MB
6. Maximum size of video upload: 15 MB
7. Maximum number of search results: 100

Also, could you share all the screenshots of your Flow configuration?

I wonder if the configuration of the relevant action did not meet expectations or there were steps that could be improved.

Since the status code is displayed as 429, indicating that the request is too much or too frequent, you may try to configure Delay action in the previous or next step of the Post a tweet action. This will lengthen the interval between requests.

Please take a try and provide more details.

Best Regards,

Barry

[tthompsonesri]

Hi Barry,

Since I've began running into this problem, I've started testing back in my development account. This uses an entirely different MS Flow and Twitter account, and I also experience this issue.

Here is the flow details (prior to implementing any suggestions you've made):

Each of those 'Appy to Each' for loops only ever loop once. I'm forced to use these loops by MS flow because I'm passing array objects into a tool. Those arrays only contain an individual member.

Thanks for your help,

Tom

[seanpanter]

I am getting the same error message:  

{
  "status": 429,
  "message": "This operation is rate limited by Twitter. Follow Twitter guidelines as given here: https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/rate-limits"...

}

I have been doing this Flow for about 3-4 months and it just started failing last week. I haven't changed anything in this Flow in a long time.

Can anyone on the product team confirm whether any changes have been released which may have affected this connector? 

Thanks!

Sean

[Pieter_Veenstra]

The twitter connector has the following limits:

1. Maximum number of connections per user: 2
2. API call rate limit for POST operation: 12 per hour
3. API call rate limit for other operations: 600 per hour
4. Frequency of trigger polls: 60 seconds
5. Maximum size of image upload: 5 MB
6. Maximum size of video upload: 15 MB
7. Maximum number of search results: 100

Have you checked that you are not exceeding any of these limits?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/twitter/

[tthompsonesri]

Hi @Pieter_Veenstra,

Thanks for the reply, below are what we're approximately running through the twitter connector. Its pretty minimal overall compared to what I've read others pushing through the connector.

1. Maximum number of connections per user: 2
   1. We only connect with an individual connector on a single twitter account from a single flow. I've replicated this issue with two different twitter and ms flow accounts.
2. API call rate limit for POST operation: 12 per hour
   1. At most, we do about 8 per hour during peak times, but is more often about 2 per hou. Presently, we're only able to post a single tweet each day before we hit the rate limit. We should not be hitting this limit.
3. API call rate limit for other operations: 600 per hour
   1. We only do twitter post operations, no other operations otherwise. these are about 10 a day or at most 8 per hour during peak times.
4. Frequency of trigger polls: 60 seconds
   1. We do not do any polling.
5. Maximum size of image upload: 5 MB
   1. We do post images, but the images I've replicated this rate limiting issue on is 56kb. 
6. Maximum size of video upload: 15 MB
   1. We do not upload videos.
7. Maximum number of search results: 100
   1. We do not search.

I can't think of anything in my flow which would cause rate limiting. I suspect that it may be that the source of the POST being 'twitter-ce.azconn-ce.p.azurewebsites.net' may be rate limited, as in all posted tweets from that source.

I wonder if @seanpanter also has the same source in his error message. 

Thanks again for your help,

Tom 

[Pieter_Veenstra]

I've been using the twitter connector in a similar way but I haven't seen any issues like this. How many tweets are you sending out in a full day? I wonder if there is somethign else that you are hitting. Whcih tiwttrer handle are you sending message out from?

[tthompsonesri]

Hi @Pieter_Veenstra

In a given day, in production, we've sent at most 8 tweets through MS flow.

The development twitter I've replicated this with is https://twitter.com/TheButum. You'll see about 3 months of testing history. Yesterday the error occured after a single twitter post.

[Pieter_Veenstra]

I'm quite suprised that you managed to get those identical tweets out. I'm quite sure that they fail. 

I got the same last week when I sent the same tweet out twice.

[tthompsonesri]

I've had no problems submitting identical tweets in the past. That may explain why I'm seeing this error in development as of recently as I test the flow using previously run tests containing the same information. I will test triggering the flow without identical information to see the results I get.

It doesn't explain why we see this problem in production as the tweets are different (though similar).  Our production twitter has users posting manually when the tweets fail through MS flow as well as other tweets/media, so it wont be of much use for you to see it.

[tthompsonesri]

Just tried to run the flow with new data from my development account. It's been a day since I last was able to post a tweet, 24 hours almost exactly. Same error, different source:

{
  "status": 429,
  "message": "This operation is rate limited by Twitter. Follow Twitter guidelines as given here: https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/rate-limits.\r\nclientRequestId: 0a5d85d7-51d4-4203-b6fb-be261e75ce90\r\nserviceRequestId: affa3cdc459b81e52ab9994cafd36a02;9da37943bb38f616cec8867b5ae1e36b",
  "source": "twitter-eus2.azconn-eus2.p.azurewebsites.net"
}

[seanpanter]

Our Flow is running once per day - where it posts one Tweet per run.

I am not sure how we could be hitting the rate limit.

Sometimes I rerun the Flow (a few times), then the Twitter action will run successfully.

I don't think it's our implementation of the Action. As I previously mentioned, it had previously ran (probably 90 or so times) over a period of around 3-4 months without any issues.

[tthompsonesri]

I'm going to test some more simplified flows today, without the For Each loops.

If I can replicate with only a single trigger and a tweet, than I'll be really puzzled. I'll let you know what I'm able to find. 

[tthompsonesri]

For what its worth @Pieter_Veenstra, your rate limiting error may be a false positive. The error I recieve when submitting duplicate posts is much more specific. You may want to investigate that further on your end, below is the error I recieve:

{
  "status": 403,
  "message": "You cannot post the same tweet twice.\r\nclientRequestId: 45068f55-4a36-40ae-b9e7-3dca0509c3ea\r\nserviceRequestId: a8ef7f779f39ef80099669571b9a6470",
  "source": "twitter-eus2.azconn-eus2.p.azurewebsites.net"
}

[panterra]

I did the same thing yesterday - removed all of the For Loops from the Flow to ensure that something wasn't happening with relation to the loops holding a connection open. 

I still belive that something has changed.

Can anyone from the product team comment on the issue at all? 

[tthompsonesri]

@panterra @seanpanter

How are your flows behaving this morning? My simplified flow has worked without issues, but so has my full development and production flows with the embedded loops.

For this reason I can't determine if the simplified flow has resolved any problems.

Everything submitted through my flows, since about 18 hours ago, has been succeeding.

[panterra]

I am still seeing the same issue - even with a streamlined Flow.

If I run the Flow another 4 or so times, it will work.

[rpadmin]

Getting the same eror. 

Simple one tweet, from button press, worked yesterday. Is someone spamming?

{
  "status": 429,
  "message": "This operation is rate limited by Twitter. Follow Twitter guidelines as given here
  "source": "twitter-we.azconn-we.p.azurewebsites.net"
}

[rpadmin]

Figured out my problem, had two users logged into the twitter account

[panterra]

@rpadmin can you describe how you were using these connections? Did you have multiple Flow Connections logged in with the same Twitter connection? 

Thank you,

Sean