Capacity Limits

The Bulk API has certain limits for the number of jobs and number of imports that can be added to Cornerstone's processing queues for concurrent processing. These limits are for each portal and environment.

Limit Type	Maximum Capacity
Jobs	50
Each Import Type (except Custom OUs)	5
Custom OUs	15

That means you can create up to 50 jobs and create up to five imports for each load type (five for employee, five for division OU, five for cost center OU and so on). Since clients can have several custom OUs, the capacity limit for custom OUs is slightly higher than other import types.

Cornerstone will respond with an HTTP 429 error for every request after these limits have reached. Note that the capacity is only consumed when the imports are created. They are released back as the imports complete. Creating jobs without actually creating the associated imports does not consume any capacity.

The Bulk API uses the same underlying framework as Edge Import. As a result, the capacity limits are common to loads triggered via the Edge Import UI and loads created using the Bulk API. For example, if you or someone else in your organization creates five employee loads using the Edge Import UI and you try to trigger a sixth load using the Bulk API, you will receive an HTTP 429 error.

We recommend programming your integration to handle HTTP 429 errors by implementing exponential back-off retry mechanism.

A note about job processing times

The time it takes to process a job will vary. It depends on several factors including the number of imports in your job, the number of records in each import, the number of columns in each import, and the number of other jobs that are currently processing. Cornerstone cannot provide any benchmarks for load times. We recommend that you iterate through several loads using the Bulk API before you arrive at an estimated load time for your specific load.