Understanding Triggered Send Queues in Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Monitoring Strategies

August 01, 2020
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Triggered sends in Salesforce Marketing Cloud allow for real-time communication and alerts through API integration. However, encountering an error for a single subscriber during a triggered send can lead to the buildup of the send queue, causing delays in campaigns or even errors for the entire send. In this article, we will explore the product design of triggered sends, discuss the reasons behind the queue buildup, and provide workarounds for monitoring and addressing this issue.

Product design:

Triggered sends in Marketing Cloud are designed to receive real-time API requests from external systems. Once a triggered send is published, it will continue to receive requests until it is archived or deleted. Even when a triggered send is paused, it can still receive and queue incoming requests, serving as a mechanism for making changes to a running triggered send. The only other state a triggered send can be in, apart from paused, archived, or deleted, is running. However, in cases where there are technical issues or held subscribers, the triggered send may not actually send out any emails, even though it appears to be running.

This becomes an issue as the triggered send queue will keep on building up with no emails going out.
 
Note: When you restart a triggered send, subscribers older than 3 days in the queue will error out. Only for subscribers who are in the queue for less than 72 hours, a resend is attempted. 

So, what are ways we can keep monitoring the triggered sends? Wait, it's monitoring the triggered send queue count right?

Monitoring Triggered Sends:

To monitor triggered sends and address issues related to send errors and queue buildup, you can consider the following strategies:

Alert Manager: 

Configure the Alert Manager in Marketing Cloud to specify email addresses for receiving email alerts in case of send errors. When an error occurs during a send, three attempts are made to resend the email. If the issue persists, the configured email addresses will receive alerts containing error details.

Complete details can be found here.

Delivery Details for Triggered Send Requests:

When triggering an email send, you receive a response containing a request ID and recipient send ID. The request ID is unique for each send request, while the recipient send ID represents a single email send. By using the recipient send ID, you can query the delivery records endpoint via an API request to determine the status of a specific email send.

Triggered Send API request response:

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HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted{
   "requestId": "e2ddb203-ea53-4843-b2d4-9f8c0c862913",  
 "responses": [   
{     
 "recipientSendId": "e2ddb203-ea53-4843-b2d4-9f8c0c862913",     
 "hasErrors": false,      
"messages": ["Queued"]  
 }]
}

Find complete details at the below links:



Automation for Monitoring Queues:

You can set up scheduled automation in Marketing Cloud that utilizes Server-Side JavaScript (SSJS) activities to retrieve the count of triggered send queues. This automation can periodically check the queue count and send out alerts or notifications based on defined thresholds.

Note: There can be instances of a queue actually building up due to valid reasons like a huge volume of requests received, throttle in place, etc...

This can raise false alerts if the queue count for alerting is not chosen properly.

Rely on Salesforce Support:

In cases where errors occur during a send, Salesforce support will raise a case and send an email to the Marketing Cloud administrator, providing details of the issue. Relying on support can ensure prompt attention and resolution of any problems encountered during triggered sends. This is part of proactive monitoring support, you can reach out to the salesforce account executive for further details.
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