KB-1566 Long page loading time for slow connections during first log in or after browser cache has been cleared

Symptoms

When logging in to an Appian instance with a web server, for the first time or after the browser cache has been cleared, users connecting from small or slow networks may notice a long page loading time.  A network capture will display large file sizes which correspond to long component loading times.

An example network capture on small connections with large file sizes may display:

Cause

When logging in to Appian with a slow or small connection for the first time or after the browser cache has been cleared, several files are downloaded as part of the user interface for Appian.  For subsequent logins, these files are cached and will be served from the browser cache which improves the page loading time.

Action

To address the size of the browser files which are downloaded when connecting from small or slow networks, consider the following:

• To troubleshoot and reduce the size of the browser files which are downloaded, configure the Deflate Module in the web server:
  • Take a network capture to determine if the MIME types of the large files correspond to the types listed in the Configure Compression Using the Deflate Module documentation.
  • Then refer to the Configure Compression Using the Deflate Module documentation to configure the compression of javascript, .CSS, and plain text files served by Appian.  Compressing the files served by Appian, by using the Deflate module, will reduce the bandwidth these files consume.
• Set the user start pages to a Site instead of Tempo to reduce the number of large files downloaded to the browser.  The file size for Sites are smaller since Sites are simpler and allow users to focus on a limited set of activities.  Refer to the User Start Pages documentation to configure user start pages.

Affected Versions

This article applies to all versions of Appian.

Last Reviewed: September 2022