A long-running request can end with a 504 response — the proxy in front of ABRA Flexi stopped waiting. However, this does not interrupt background processing, which will run to completion.
What to do
Wait for the process to finish, and only then verify the result by querying the data.
Don't send the request again right away. A repeated call will get stuck on locks held by the still-running first process — instead of speeding things up, the two calls will block each other.
Verify the result based on the data, not the return code. For imports, it's useful to have your own identifier so you can tell whether the record was created.
⚠️ A 504 response doesn't mean the operation failed — only that it took longer than the proxy was willing to wait. This is fundamentally different from 503, where the request never even reached the core; that case is described in the article Error 503 Service Unavailable.
How to avoid timeouts
Split the batch into smaller parts. Importing in batches of hundreds of records is more reliable than a single request with tens of thousands.
Limit the scope of reads — use
detail=custominstead ofdetail=full, and a filter instead of downloading the entire record set.Avoid concurrency — two batches operating on the same documents will block each other.
💡 If timeouts keep occurring even with small requests, it's more likely a performance issue with the instance — contact support so they can check the server's operation.