Import via API sometimes ends with the response:
503 Service Unavailable
This is not a data error — the request never actually reached the ABRA Flexi core. The response comes from the proxy in front of the application server, typically when the server is briefly overloaded or restarting.
What to do
Retry the request. It usually goes through on the next attempt.
Handle retries in your integration — for batch imports, it pays off to implement automatic retries with a delay of a few seconds and a limited number of attempts.
Verify the result. A
503response means the import was not performed. Still, it's worth checking before retrying whether the record was actually created — if you use a custom identifier (code or external ID) in the import, a repeated request will simply update the record, and no duplicate will be created.
💡 The best defense against duplicates on retry is a custom identifier in every imported record. This makes the import idempotent — see Record Identifiers.
⚠️ If 503 keeps recurring persistently, it's not a typical outage — please contact support. The same applies to the 504 response, which means the request ran for too long; this is covered in the article REST API Returns a Timeout.