agent timed out when agent tried to answer an employee question on the new policy error timeout failure

TL;DR

Fix this in policy question answering agent by acting on the exact problem first: split answering into retrieval and writing steps with the retrieved policy extract saved between them, set a time budget per question, and return the best supported partial answer with its gaps named when the budget ends. Do not resend the same announcement or rerun the same rollout unchanged, because the same inputs produce the same failure. Prove the fix on one employee group or policy page first, then rerun the full scope and reconcile the results.

agent timed out when agent tried to answer an employee question on the new policy error timeout failure

Use this when

• The operation in policy question answering agent fails with this exact problem: agent timed out when agent tried to answer an employee question on the new policy error timeout failure.
• The same failure repeats on retry with unchanged inputs.
• A policy rollout, handbook acknowledgment, announcement or employee question is blocked until this is resolved.

Not for this skill when

• The notice is a platform outage from the vendor. Resolve that first, then return here if this problem remains.
• The operation completes and you only disagree with a policy wording or eligibility judgement. That is a policy owner decision, not this failure.

Steps

1. Reproduce the failure on one named employee group, policy page or announcement in policy question answering agent and record the full problem text plus the group, page or policy involved. Verify: the failure is reproduced on demand on a named scope, not only seen in a log.
2. Apply the specific fix for this problem: split answering into retrieval and writing steps with the retrieved policy extract saved between them, set a time budget per question, and return the best supported partial answer with its gaps named when the budget ends. Verify: the single failing group, page or announcement now behaves as the fix predicts, or the corrected value is visible on the record.
3. Check neighbouring employee groups, policy pages or announcements that share the same audience, template or schedule, because this class of failure rarely affects only one group. Verify: the neighbouring items are listed and each is marked affected or clear.
4. Rerun the original operation in policy question answering agent on the previously failing scope, watching for the same problem rather than assuming success from a quiet log. Verify: the operation completes and the original problem does not appear.
5. Compare the result against the source of truth, the published policy text, the HR roster or the acknowledgment record, so a silent partial success is caught. Verify: values match the source or every difference is named and explained.
6. Record the fix, the triggering input and the verification result on the rollout log so the next occurrence is recognised immediately. Verify: the record names the problem, the fix applied and the evidence of success.

Variant phrasings

agent timed out when agent tried to answer an employee question on the new policy error timeout failure

The verbatim form searchers paste from the console, report or run log. Treat it identically: same fix, same single group proof, then the full rerun.

How to fix - agent timed out when agent tried to answer an employee question on the new policy error timeout failure

The how to phrasing for the same failure in policy question answering agent. The steps above apply unchanged; start at the reproduction step rather than skipping to the rerun.

policy question answering agent troubleshooting for this failure

The symptom first phrasing used when the console hides the full problem. Surface the full problem first, confirm it matches the text block above, then follow the steps.

Why it happens

Researching and writing in one call means a slow handbook search leaves no time to write, so questions time out even when the right section was found early in the run.

Edge cases

• The policy was republished, the audience changed or a group was renamed after the failing run started. Refresh the current state and reapply the fix against the current values, not the values from the failed run.
• The single group proof passes but the full rerun still fails on other groups. Treat each remaining failure as its own scope, because a shared audience, template or schedule can hide more than one cause.
• The source systems disagree on the correct value. The published policy text governs wording, the HR roster governs audience and employment status, and the acknowledgment record governs who signed; record which source won and why.

Compatibility: policy question answering agent at current versions, plus the HR system, handbook or messaging tool the query names; no extra tooling beyond access to the source records needed to verify results.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_YcEZNOxKmqviN8asFAlivQ