Latency
The time between a trigger firing and an automation completing. Production workflows should complete within seconds for real-time triggers. High latency (>30s) often indicates an upstream API issue or inefficient workflow design.
Expert insight
When latency creeps up over time rather than appearing suddenly, the usual culprit is a workflow doing more work per run than it used to, more records in a loop, more conditional branches evaluated, more downstream API calls added feature by feature without anyone re-measuring the total path. Latency should be checked after every meaningful change to a workflow, not just when someone first builds it.
In a real workflow
A chatbot that waits for three sequential API calls feels slow; running them in parallel cuts the wait.
Common mistakes
- Optimising latency for background jobs where it does not matter.
- Ignoring latency in customer-facing steps like form replies.
Complexity level
Requires some familiarity with automation concepts.
Related terms
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