How to minimize outbound calls using predefined flow designer (Integration hub) ?

[shabbir5]

Hi Team,

We are triggering a flow from servicenow for every 5 minutes to check the connection between servicnow and other third party systems ( X , Y , Z) 

So for every 5 minutes --> 3 outbound calls are going out

So per day --> 864 outbound calls are going out,  so  per year 3,15,360 calls which is now become huge

So now as part of new license renewal

if the outbound calls less than 1 lakh there is no need to pay extra cost

Can someone suggest the best ways to minimize the outbound calls  at the same time a proactive monitoring should be in place

Looking forward for new ideas

Regards,

Shabbir Shaik

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @shabbir5 

Triggering a flow every 5 minutes to ping external systems is not at all recommended.

• Constant pinging generates unnecessary traffic and taxes the API rate limits of your third-party systems (X, Y, Z).
• You are running a check even when the connection is healthy or when no data actually needs to be synchronized.
• Constantly invoking a flow scheduler and engine every 5 minutes can degrade overall system performance

Instead of ServiceNow polling Systems X, Y, and Z   ,  

• Automate it in such a way that your scheduled script will check log or create an incident in ServiceNow if a system fails. Do not needlessly trigger workflows on every successful 5-minute pass.
• Use a scheduled script execution (Scheduled Job) running via ServiceNow Scripts - Background rather than heavy Flow Designer flows. 

There also just for integration health check ,  Job frequency with every 5 mins is not recommended.

[yashkamde]

Hello @shabbir5 ,

Actually, we can move from using IntegrationHub to having a Script Include to make api calls because ServiceNow keeps reducing the number of max transaction for IntegrationHub and moving up is too expensive for us.

Using a Scheduled Job to trigger a Script Include (via sn_ws.RESTMessageV2) will successfully bypass the IntegrationHub licensing limits. Standard outbound HTTP requests triggered via scripts do not count as IntegrationHub transactions, meaning they will not count toward your 1 lakh limit.

It is a very common, cost-saving workaround in the ecosystem. The only trade-off is that you have to manually script the error handling, timeouts, and retry logic that Flow Designer usually handles ootb.

If my response helped mark as helpful and accept the solution. 

[Bill Martin]

I’d suggest we park the cost discussion for a moment and focus first on best practices.

The key question is: what is the right, sustainable way to monitor these integrations from an engineering and operations point of view? Once we have a solid pattern, we can look at the commercials on top of that.

It’s good that you’re thinking about reducing spend, and we can absolutely factor that in. But any workaround that adds custom logic also creates technical debt and increases total cost of ownership over time (more code to maintain, more testing on upgrades, more complexity for support teams).

To really justify the approach, it would be ideal to have your ServiceNow/enterprise architect review the design and sign off. If you don’t have someone in that role, I’m happy to help you think through the options and shape a pattern that balances good practice with cost.