Document Tab View

[Luke_Wilcox]

Hi

Have an issue with the document tab in ACT Premium V 17.0 - PC's using microsoft .net framework 4.5.2

If select the document tab for a contact that has a large number of documents attached to it, it takes an age for the page to load.  it's ok for new contacts and for contacts with a small number of documents attached.

For example i have 1 contact that has 350 documents attached to it (all from this year) - and it can take a good 5 minutes for the page to load and is the same on multiple computers.

If however i access the same contact using Act For Web it displays almost immediately - this is because the web version limits the display to 25 so you get page 1 of x on the documents tab.

Is there a way of doing this on the desktop version or was this resolved in the later patches of ACT V17?

Any help greatly appreciated! 

[Gary W]

Hi Luke,

The slowdown is most likely due to the large amount of documents attached to the record.
How long exactly is the delay you are experiencing?

Are the attachments stored locally to the machine, or are you using a shared database over a network?

I'm not aware of any settings changes that can be made to improve the responsiveness of the tab when such a large amount of attachments exist within it. My suggestion would be to remove old attachments from the contact, either manually, or by using the Remove Old Data feature.

[Luke_Wilcox]

Hi

Thanks for the response.

Sometimes the users can wait 5-10 minutes for the page to load.

Shared Database on Server - Windows Server 2012 R2 - 8GBb RAM - Intel Xeon CPU E5-260 v2 @ 2.10GHz

We have already done that, there are just 12 months worth of documents attached to the database - we can't really archive any more than this.

The only success we have had to far is to create a duplicate contact, for example

Joe Bloggs (live contact for new documents to be attached)

Joe Bloggs 2016 (used for the first half of the year - contacts added Jan-June)

But it's not really a proper fix as we will have to do the same process next year and have multiple contacts with a large amount of contacts 

Regards 

[Gary W]

Hi Luke,

Have you tested using Act directly on the server if loading the Documents tab on a Contact record also experiences the same amount of delay?

[Luke_Wilcox]

Hi

ACT crashes on the server when just opening the documents tab - i'm guessing it's that is related to the .net framework 4.6.1 issue as it looks like that version is on the server.

Could/would the server version of .net framework affect client performance?

i'm not sure how easy it is to roll back a servers .net framework version! i will investigate.

Regards 

[Gary W]

Hi Luke,

The crashing behaviour has been fixed in a hotfix which applies to a later version of Act v17. I would suggest updating to Act v17.2 or later which will also install this hotfix. The update for v17 can be found in the Download Center. Look for the SP2 update for your version.

The update should also be applied to the client machines after the server has been updated.

I don't expect this update to increase the speed of the Documents tab loading, but should fix the crashing. After this has been done, please check to see how long the Documents tab takes to load on the server.

[Luke_Wilcox]

Hi 

Finally got round to being able to look at this again.  I have a test server which i am using to using to test the ACT upgrade.

I created a backup of the current database and restored to the test server and made sure all was ok on v17.0.  timed opening documents tab from a PC connected to the test server and get similar times to live server (just so have something to compare to)

i have upgraded to 17.2 on the test server.  opening documents tab direct on the server now doesn't crash ACT however it also takes a long time to open the tab on contacts with a large number of documents.

we also have another problem with the upgrade to 17.2 - when accessing through the web browser when logging in get the following message appear for 30 seconds "Preparing your database...Please Wait..." then after 30 seconds or so it does eventually login and all seems ok - have tried this from different browsers, different pc's and the ie browser on the server itself and all get the message when logging into act on web.  Chrome infact once loaded doesn't show anything at all and displays contact 0 of 0

i know i've mixed a couple of issues but we can't do a full upgrade to 17.2 if the same issues were to occur in live environment

any ideas?

regards 

[Gary W]

Hi Luke.

I'm glad to hear the crashing has been resolved.

For the long "Preparing your database...Please Wait..." issue, Is this unique to v17.2, or did it also take a while in v17.0?
It is common that this message takes a little longer to get past on the initial login of the day, but subsequent logins should be faster. Are you seeing this behaviour?

Make sure you have your IE browser set to the recommended settings as per the following Knowledgebase article: http://kb.act.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/38158

Chrome not showing any contacts is a different problem that we should troubleshoot separately.

[Luke_Wilcox]

hi

still getting the same message today, have logged in multiple times from multiple computers using multiple act user accounts and get the same message every time.

can you confirm the following please?

• Compatibility mode (when using Internet Explorer with v17 only) - is that only for v17.0 ? because adding that with 17.2 gives the same as what i reported for chrome - the contacts shows 0 of 0

other than that i have done all and still getting the same message when logging into APFW in ie11

[Gary W]

Hi Luke,

After speaking with some colleagues, it would appear that the requirement for compatibility mode was phased out in v17.2.

It's worth ensuring you have the latest update for v17.2 applied. This is update 3, and can be downloaded from the download center: https://www.act.com/en-uk/resources/downloads/act-premium-v17
I know that there were significant further improvements made to overall web interface browser compatibility and performance in v18 and later.

The "Preparing your database" message will show on each login. This is normal behaviour. The time it takes to complete the preparation can be affected by a few factors, including database size, available system resources, server bandwidth, and client connection speeds.