Recommendation: Should AWS provide a function for lambda timeout

Problem Statement:

I have worked extensively with AWS Serverless concepts in the Integration world. Services I use on daily basis include SQS, SNS, API Gateway, Lambda, etc.,

Since our application often acts as a bridge between multiple systems, one of the main challenges I often face is the performance issues with external systems. Becoz of these performance degradations, I often notice Lambda’s timing out. This will impact logging and the stats we use these logs to analyze.

I have tried multiple solutions to avoid lambda timeouts like processing a single message from SQS, setting lambda time to 15 mins(Max time), limiting lambda execution programmatically, etc. No solution worked out in our favor to rightly handle this issue.

Recommended Solution:

AWS should come up with a new method(let's name it timeout_handler) similar to the event handler method. This timeout_handler should be invoked whenever lambda gets timed out, this gives the users flexibility to write simple code to add a log or do some action that feels right to the users/organizations.