Experiencing slow load times with SaaS software?

Performance Testing

If you believe that you are experiencing slow load times in Project Insight. You can test to verify what might be causing the slow load times.

The procedures are for testing only. Though sometimes requiring a temporary change to a configuration, these procedures should be approached with caution and do not represent recommendations for permanent configuration changes. Changes to security settings, even temporary changes, should always be performed by those authorized personnel within your organization responsible for systems security.

1. Empty your browser cache - Project Insight makes heavy use of JavaScript, which can have performance and reliability issues when the browser cache has out-of-date JavaScript code. Although the browsers are supposed to check JavaScript versions for updates on each page load, they do not always do so properly. Instructions for emptying cache can be located in the help for your particular browser. If a problem is found to regularly occur and also found to be regularly solved by clearing cache, then there is probably a better solution to the problem than simply clearing cache each time. Furthermore, cache problems might happen at a network appliance level, in which case browser cache is not an issue and clearing it will result in no improvement. These types of problems need to be analyzed by a LAN administrator in order to observe the possibility that cache exists in the local network as opposed to the local computer browser.
2. Compare your PC to other PCs with similar configurations and performance on the same network - This helps to troubleshoot differences in performance between Internet bandwidth and desktop computer issues. You may find that certain departments within a single company using the same systems have slightly different configurations, i.e. the development and sales departments may be using the same anti-virus software with different security level settings.
3. Disable (temporarily) your virus and spy ware checking - These applications often set strict parameters on JavaScript security, which can significantly slow performance. It may be unnoticeable when visiting most sites on the Web, but loading Project Insight’s application code into the browser requires more browser-based code execution than the average site. Security software will slow the execution of these applications while they check for malicious code. If this is the case, you may find settings or site “trusts” that you can configure with your security software that will make an exception for the Project Insight pages so that it bypasses the process of analyzing the code prior to execution.
4. Run tracert to look for low performance points - Tracert can help to detect latency at connectivity points between the computer accessing Project Insight and the Project Insight servers. Tracert results may be copied into an email and sent to support@projectinsight.net for analysis. Although not always an accurate measure of network performance, tracert statistics can sometimes help to locate trouble spots within the connectivity path. Tracert syntax and help may be found using the command “tracert /?” (without the quotation marks) from a PC command prompt. Further information may be obtained by using the search in Microsoft Windows help on tracert as the keyword.
5. Try using an alternative browser application on your computer - Different Web browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, should have similar performance results on the same PC. This test assumes that all browsers are recent versions that are kept up-to-date by their providers. For example, Internet Explorer and Chrome are both supported with regular updates on the Microsoft Windows platform, but Internet Explorer is often blocked from updates to protect those updates from disrupting legacy web applications (primarily applications using ActiveX). If performance with one is significantly different than the other, we will want to examine configurations and plug-ins to see if we can pinpoint any specific problems.
6. Run a test after normal business hours - If there is a major noticeable difference between business hours and non-business hours, this could indicate network traffic problems as the culprit during heavy use periods.
7. Run a test over another network (e.g., home) - This can help to check for performance on different networks and different computers. If you have a notebook computer that you can use on different networks, it can further assist in the comparison.