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TylerBrezler's avatar
TylerBrezler
Qrew Cadet
12 months ago

App Load Timeouts and app performance issues

I've recently been experiencing what are called "app load timeouts", where I will open one of my apps and rather than loading (even if it takes a few seconds), I instead get an error message or something like, "App waiting to load."  In order to actually get the app to load, I need to either refresh my page or click on the app title link in the top-left. Although the page never loads if I simply wait, it will load immediately when I prompt a refresh.

I inquired with Customer Support and they explained that this is something new, implemented on the back end to improve overall performance with the site. While I'm all for performance improvements, this idea that I now have to load my apps twice every single time I want to access them seems like a pretty big step backwards from a user interaction standpoint.

It was also pointed out to me, and I have heard various discussions about this over the past year or two, that I need to "optimize" my apps.  However it doesn't seem like Quickbase has a clear standard in terms of what "optimized" consists of, in the sense of, "if your app meets these standards, it will not timeout upon load."  I find it a bit frustrating to say, "Hey, my app isn't behaving as expected," and be provided some vague advice that is more riddle than answer.  And while I fully understand that everyone's apps are different and optimization can mean a lot of things, I would hope that there is some guidance to troubleshoot their own design decisions.

The one piece of concrete advice that I received was to create a pipeline that performs a simple API request that runs every 20 minutes, which I guess prevents your app from "going to sleep." But I fail to see how that could be considered anything other than a clumsy band-aid to a step backward in user experience.

Anyway, this is a bit of a rant, but I'm wondering how many other people have encountered this and what you're doing to remedy it.  I have apps where this is occurring, and when I run the performance management tools, it just says that my tables have too many default fields, or that some tables don't contain any relationships, which can't possibly be driving app load issues, right?  None of the performance insights are related to actual performance.

3 Replies

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  • RaulGranados's avatar
    RaulGranados
    Qrew Member
    6 months ago

    Hello Tyler! I do have the exact same problem as you. Perhaps we can connect. Im interested to see at least if you have solved the problem with the API and brainstorm some ideas.



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    Raul Granados
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  • AdamKrzyzanek's avatar
    AdamKrzyzanek
    Qrew Captain
    6 months ago

    As far as I know this is about application size and how much GB it consume on "Estimated memory consumption".
    You can check it under: Home --> Settings --> App management --> Show app statistics --> Estimated memory consumption

    Also if app is connected to other app you will see different value in GB in field: Est. memory incl. dependent apps.

    I read somewhere that app will go to Sleep if it reaches size above 25 GB for memory consumption (But I have few long not used apps which are having same Loading screen and are below 20GB).

    Also you App will go asleep only if not used for 60 minutes (see here: https://helpv2.quickbase.com/hc/en-us/articles/16259648646292-Quickbase-June-2023-release-notes#:~:text=New%20application%20sleep%20time)



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    Adam Krzyzanek
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    • ChayceDuncan's avatar
      ChayceDuncan
      Qrew Captain
      6 months ago

      It might be relevant here, might not, but one thing to consider with your app setup is how you bind different apps together. When Quickbase loads your app - if you have apps that are connected by cross-app relationships, have a shared Mulitple Choice field, table to table import, any of those where you are sharing something between Apps - when you open one app it's actually like loading them all. So if you have 5 small apps that you think meet the thresholds, each time you load one you load them all which can potentially cause issues. 

      So for example if you have one monster app that has cross app relationships to smaller apps that surround it - if you just wanted to load the small one and you can't figure out why it's slow, it's because it has to load both creating potential lag in situations where you don't expect it. 



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      Chayce Duncan
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