Greetings from Syncfusion support.
For a WebApiAdaptor used in DataManager, it is a must to return from the WebApi service as Items and Count to bind the service to a Grid component. Please refer the documentation link below in which we have used Orders service for binding data to Grid,
For Employees service, the return type is as result, count and not as items, count pair. So the Employees service could not be used to populate data to Grid. But, Orders service return data as items and count pair, so it binds data to Grid. Please refer the below screenshot for the difference in response for both Orders and Employees.
So we suggest you to ensure to use a webapi service with return data as Items and Count pair to bind data to Grid. Please get back to us if you need further assistance.
Regards,
Renjith R