Tuesday, May 6, 2014

New / Edit form loads but not responding for 10 seconds

Ok, something we have been struggling with for months and drove many of us at KWizCom a bit crazy…

It is hard to explain, so I’ll try my best:

In our internal portal, we are using SharePoint 2010.

In our current bug tracking list, we use a SharePoint list similar to the issue tracking, every time to click on a new item or edit item – the page loads quickly enough, but it is stuck and not responding for up to 10 seconds sometimes.

After 10 seconds, the page completes loading, rich texts load their toolbar, and the ribbon starts working.

We have over 4000 items in that list, and the problem just becomes more and more of an issue as the list grows.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally managed to pin point the code that makes the browser stuck:

It is a javascript file called “groupeditempicker.js”, and more specifically, a function called “GipInitializeGroup”.

After a little research, I realized this code is a part of the SharePoint out of the box multi-lookup column picker (the left-right-boxes like we call it), which was looking up items from the current list as related issues.

Once I converted this lookup into our Cascading Lookup with “edit on demand” flag, which was designed to work on large list lookups – the problem was solved immediately.

Not sure how many people out there will encounter this issue, and from them how many will find this post – bug if you did, leave me a comment! I am curious to know if it was just us.

Happy SharePointing,

Shai.

Edit: A link to KWizCom cascading lookup product. This product can show multi - lookup as a grid control with paging and checkboxes, and supports a mode we call "edit by request" which means if you edit the item - this field will display the view mode of the current value. If you want to modify it, you have to click on the edit button to change it into edit mode. This feature is very useful for huge lookup lists that you do not modify every time. Cascading lookup page

4 comments:

Andi said...

Hey Shai, I've tried to find the specific feature you're talking about "Lookup with edit on demand" on your website, but I haven't been succesful. Could you please send me a link or note, where I can find it, because this might help us with a problem we're having since a long time. Regards, Andreas

Shai Petel said...

Hi Andi, I've modified the post and included a link to the said product.

Its called "cascading lookup plus field type".

Let me know if you need help with setting it up, should be easy to convert existing lookup column into this new column type and keeping your data intact.

ClemDev said...

We seem to be having this exact problem. I've tried everything (within my power) to fix it, but I can't seem to speed it up. Too bad my employer won't allow us to just purchase your software because it sounds like the only viable solution at this point.

Shai, any chance you have a tip that could maybe help me out? It would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Shai Petel said...

Hi ClemDev,
You got 2 options they way I see it:
1. Changing the multi-lookup to a different field type / control type. Our product is just one example.

2. Stop using the multi-lookup. If the field is not necessary - remove it. If it is - try to find some other way around it.

You could also try to report a bug to Microsoft, since this is an OOB control and SP2010 should work very well with 4000 items in a list, so there is no real reason for this delay and should be fixable.