# Workday 429 "request throttled" during the agent's nightly candidate pull

## TL;DR

The nightly pull hit Workday's throttling because it pulls everything every night. Pace the requests, switch to incremental pulls (changed-since), and shrink the payload to needed fields. Full nightly dumps are the most throttle-prone pattern there is.

```text
429 "request throttled" (Workday nightly candidate pull)
```

## Steps

1. Check the throttling guidance: Workday documents concurrency and rate expectations per tenant.
   Expected: The allowed pace is known.

2. Pace the pull: delay between pages, limited concurrency.
   Expected: Requests stay under the throttle.

3. Switch to incremental: pull only records changed since the last run.
   Expected: The payload shrinks dramatically.

4. Request only the fields the sync needs; wide reports cost more.
   Expected: Each page is lighter.

5. Checkpoint progress so a throttled run resumes.
   Expected: Partial progress is kept.

## When to use

- Workday nightly pulls hit 429
- the pull is full, not incremental
- the payload is wide

## When not to use

- the 429 is on a different operation (check which call throttled)
- a single request 429s (look for a loop)
- the tenant's limits genuinely cannot fit the need (talk to Workday)

## Tool compatibility

- Workday RaaS / REST
- nightly sync workflows

## Variant phrasings

- "workday 429 request throttled"
- "workday nightly pull throttled"
- "workday candidate pull rate limit"

## Why it happens

Workday throttles aggressively to protect shared tenants, and a full nightly candidate dump is the heaviest read pattern an integration runs. Incremental pulls change the math: instead of the whole dataset nightly, it is the day's changes. The throttle is the system asking for the cheaper pattern.

## Edge cases

- the changed-since watermark must be durable; losing it forces another full pull
- field selection affects throttling cost; audit the report definition
- schedule the pull when the tenant is quietest

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_E79m308btDQQCITMWrCiqg