Errors

The API uses standard HTTP status codes. 2xx means success, 4xx means your request had a problem you can fix, 5xx means something went wrong on our side.

Status code reference

Status	Meaning	What to do
`200`	The request succeeded.	Carry on.
`400`	The request body failed validation (missing field, bad email format, password too short, invalid enum value, etc).	Read the error body. Fix the request. Do not retry as-is.
`400`	You tried to use a feature that's reserved for a future release (e.g. `actionType: EMAIL` on the Automations API).	Wait for the feature, or stick to what's currently supported.
`401`	The `X-API-Key` header is missing, malformed, disabled, or belongs to a deleted key.	Check the header is present and the key exists in Settings → API Keys in the Progress admin.
`500`	The trainee id doesn't exist in your company. The server doesn't reveal whether the id exists in someone else's company, so this surfaces as a server error today.	Confirm the trainee belongs to the company that owns your API key. Do not retry.
`500`	A genuine server error.	Retry once with exponential backoff (1s, then 5s). If it still fails, contact support with the timestamp.

Error body shape

For 400 responses, the body is JSON:

{
  "errorCode": 47,
  "message": ""
}

The errorCode is a Progress-specific identifier — share it with support if you need help diagnosing a specific failure.

For 401 and 500, the body is empty. The status code tells you everything.

Retry behavior

We recommend:

Never auto-retry 4xx. They mean the request itself is wrong; retrying won't help and adds load.
Retry 5xx up to 2 times with exponential backoff (1s, 5s).
Log everything. When you contact support, the timestamp + the response body lets us trace the request in our server logs.

Idempotency

The trainee API isn't formally idempotent — POST /public-api/trainees twice creates two trainees (and the second usually fails with a 400 because email and phone are unique). If you need at-most-once delivery semantics, dedupe on your side using your own request id before calling the API.

Need help?

Contact Progress support with:

The request URL (e.g. POST /public-api/trainees).
The response status code.
The response body (especially errorCode if present).
The timestamp of the request, with timezone.

We log every public API call and can reproduce what happened.