When Something Goes Wrong

Sooner or later the application will do something you did not expect: a window appears with an apology, a list never finishes loading, or you click Save and end up on the sign-in screen. This chapter explains what each of those means and what to do about it.

Most of what you will meet is not a fault. A large part of it is the application telling you, in a fairly blunt way, that it asked for too much data or that your session ran out.

The Error Window

This is the one message you are most likely to see, and it covers a very wide range of causes.

It appears as a small window in the middle of the screen, titled Error When Processing Request, and it says:

We are sorry. An error occurred while processing the request. If the processing took a long time, it is possible that the request timed out. In such a case, selecting fewer data items at once might help. If the problem persists, please contact the administrator.

There is a single button, Understood, and a close cross in the top corner.

What It Actually Means

The application sends most of its work off in the background — loading a list, saving a form, running an action — and this window appears when one of those background requests did not come back successfully. That covers several very different situations that the window cannot tell apart:

• the request took too long and was cut off (by far the most common)
• the screen asked for more data than the server could assemble
• something genuinely failed on the server
• your network connection dropped mid-request

The window's own advice — select fewer items at once — is aimed at the first two, because they are the usual cause.

What This Window Does And Does Not Do

• It does not close by pressing Esc, and it does not close by clicking outside it. This is deliberate, so it cannot be dismissed by accident. Use the button or the close cross.
• Closing it leaves you exactly where you were. Nothing is undone and nothing is retried.
• It does not cover every failure. If the request that failed was you moving to another screen, the browser usually reloads the page in full instead of showing this window.
• If it appeared while a list was loading, the list stays empty or stuck on its loading placeholder. No partial results are shown.
• If it appeared while you were saving, assume the save did not happen. Check the record before trying again.

What To Do, In Order

1. Close the window and look at the screen. Did the thing you were doing complete?
2. If you were loading a list, reduce the number of rows per page and try again. This solves the majority of cases. See Large Lists And Performance.
3. If you were saving, reopen the record and check whether your change is there. If it is not, and you still have the form open in another window, copy your text somewhere safe before retrying.
4. Try once more. A one-off timeout genuinely does happen.
5. If it happens again in the same place, it is worth reporting. Collect what is listed in What To Report below.

Example A colleague in accounts sets an invoice list to 500 rows per page with a running total over all matching records, then adds a filter. The screen shows its loading placeholder for a long time, then the error window appears. Setting the page size back to 50 makes the same screen load in a second. Nothing was broken — the screen was asked for more than it could put together in the time available.

Full-Page Errors

Some failures replace the whole page instead of showing a window. Most of these pages print a short explanation and a small error number underneath it. The Page Not Found page is a plain standalone page with Step back and Go to homepage buttons and a contact link at the bottom; the others usually appear inside the normal application frame instead.

A permission problem can also arrive as a message strip rather than a page. Instead of the screen you asked for you land on the sign-in screen, with either "Please sign in to continue." or, if you were already signed in, "You do not have sufficient privileges to access this page." The second one means the address is real but your role does not reach it.

Being Signed Out While You Work

You click something and land on the sign-in screen, often with Your login has expired. Please sign in again.

This has a few ordinary causes:

• your sign-in was marked as expired, either because it reached its age limit or because an administrator ended it
• your account was switched off, or its valid-from / valid-to dates no longer cover today — in that case the message is "Logged in user does not exist."
• your password expired, in which case you are sent to the change-password screen instead, with "Your password has expired. Please change your password." You are sent back there from every other screen until you change it

You lose whatever you had typed and not saved. There is no recovery for it. The application does not keep a draft of a record you were filling in.

Two habits genuinely reduce the damage:

• On a long form, save once early. You can keep editing afterwards.
• If you have been away from the screen for a long time, do not trust the tab you left open. Reload the page before you start typing into it.

A List That Never Finishes Loading

A list first shows a pulsing grey placeholder in roughly the shape of the layout it is about to draw, then replaces it with real data. While a request is running you also get a thin moving bar across the top of the page, or across the top of the pop-up window if that is where the work is happening. If the placeholder stays there, the request behind it is still running — or it failed and the error window is about to appear.

Try these in order:

1. Lower the number of rows per page.
2. Remove some filter conditions, particularly ones on fields that come from other records.
3. Turn off any calculation that is set to cover all matching records rather than the displayed page.
4. Use the refresh control to try again.

If a screen does this consistently, it is not something you can fix from your side. See Large Lists And Performance for how to describe it so it can be fixed properly.

Something You Saved Did Not Appear

Almost always one of four things, in this order of likelihood:

1. The list is showing you an older snapshot. Lists do not update themselves. Use the refresh control. See Saved Views.
2. Your filters exclude it. A new record often does not match the conditions you had set — a new order with no status will not appear in a list filtered to "status is Approved".
3. You are on a different saved view than you think. Check which view the saved-view switcher on the toolbar is showing.
4. It saved into a different folder, if the screen uses folders.

If none of those explain it, open the record's own screen directly, or search for it. If the record exists but the list will not show it, the problem is the filter, not the save.

Things That Look Broken But Are Your Network

Some of what the application draws on screen is fetched from the public internet when the page loads: the icon set, the month-and-year picker, the charts, and the file uploader. If an office firewall, a proxy, a browser extension or an ad-blocker blocks those, the application still runs — it loses those pieces only, and it does not tell you why.

The symptoms are distinctive, so they are worth recognizing:

If you see several of these at once, this is almost certainly the cause. Two quick checks:

• Does the same screen behave the same way on your phone using mobile data rather than the office network? If it works there, it is the network.
• Does it behave the same way in a different browser with extensions turned off?

Then report it to whoever looks after your network, not to whoever looks after the application. Say which of the four symptoms you see — that is enough for them to know exactly what to unblock.

Smaller Things That Confuse People

A pop-up window that closes and loses your work. Closing a pop-up with unsaved changes asks you to confirm first. Closing a full-page form does not ask at all. See Pop-Up Windows.

A button pressed twice. Nothing stops you from clicking Save or an action button again while the first click is still running, and on a slow connection you may not be sure whether anything happened. Watch for the thin moving bar at the top of the page or pop-up: while it is there, the request is still going. Do not press the button repeatedly — wait, then check the record.

Your change overwritten by a colleague. If two people edit the same record, the one who saves last wins, silently, with no warning to either of you. See Creating And Editing Records.

A message that vanished before you read it. Toast messages disappear after about five seconds and are not kept anywhere. If you missed one, the safest move is to check whether what you did actually took effect. See Notifications, Jobs And Messages.

What The Application Needs From Your Browser

The application is not a simple web page, and a few browser conditions genuinely matter:

• JavaScript must be enabled. Without it nothing works at all.
• Cookies and browser storage must be allowed. They hold your sign-in, your theme, your column widths, and the list of your background exports.
• A private or incognito window loses all of that the moment you close it. Use one only for a quick look, never for a working session.
• A tab left open overnight should be reloaded before you use it. It is holding a stale page and a session that may have ended.
• There is no offline mode. The application does not detect that your connection dropped, does not queue your work, and does not retry by itself.

What To Report

When you do need help, the difference between a fast fix and a long conversation is the detail you send. Copy this and fill it in:

What I was doing:
Screen (and saved view, if any):
Address from the address bar:
What I expected to happen:
What actually happened (exact wording of any message):
Roughly when it happened:
Does it happen every time?
Does a colleague see the same thing?
Browser and device:

Two details matter more than people expect:

• The exact wording of the message. "It said Error When Processing Request" and "it said Access Denied" send the investigation in completely opposite directions.
• Whether a colleague can reproduce it. If they cannot, it is very likely a permission or a personal setting rather than a fault.

Before reporting, it is worth checking Why Your Screen Differs From A Colleague's — a good share of what feels like a bug turns out to be a role or a leftover filter.

One Safety Note

The application will never ask you for your password by e-mail, and it will never ask you to confirm your password to a person. A genuine password-reset e-mail contains a link that takes you to the application to set a new password yourself. If you receive anything else, do not act on it and tell your administrator.

Related Chapters

• Large Lists And Performance
• What To Ask Your Administrator For
• Why Your Screen Differs From A Colleague's
• Notifications, Jobs And Messages
• Signing In