Knowledgebase : Technical, Configuration and Devices > Performance
Diagnosing and resolving speed issues to Incisive inCLOUD

If you are experiencing slow response times or you are frequently disconnecting from Incisive inCLOUD, there are a number of simple checks you can make which can make quite a difference to the responsiveness of the program:

    1. Check your computer has all the current Windows or iOS updates.  If there are any updates waiting to be applied, apply them.

    2. Go to Setup > Workstation > Configuration and check that the selected printers appear in a black font and not a red font.  If it's red, it means the printer cannot be connected to and can cause speed problems, especially in Letters/Notes.  Check that the printers are online and also not out of paper.  Remove all unneeded printer drivers.  

    3. Make sure there are no music streaming services running on the computer, such as Spotify, Apple Music, or podcast services.

    4. If you are using a Wireless network connection, plug in an ethernet cable as the connection is faster and much more reliable.

    5. If you're using a laptop, set your Power Management settings to Maximum Power.  If the disk or system goes to sleep it will drop the network connection.  Also check that the network card is not set to go into 'Sleep' mode.
    6. Run the 'Database Speed Report' in Reports > System  and in the 'Read Time:' section can you let us know what the value is for the Avg= (ideally it should be less than 4.0ms)

    7. In a browser, run an internet speed test to check the connection to your internet provider. Enter the following or click on this URL https://speedtest.net then click on the Go button to start the test.  Ideally your upload and download speed should be greater than 100Mbps and the ping time should be less than 30ms

    8. Restart your internet router.  This is a small device that connects your office to the internet.  Often the best way to restart it is to remove the power cable to it, wait 5-10 seconds for it to completely power down, then put the power back in.  It will take several minutes to connect to your ISP again.

    9. Setup a 'Hot Spot' from your mobile phone and connect your wireless network connection to the hotspot.  If this improves the connection speed or reliability, it is likely that your usual internet modem/router or internet provider may need to be changed.

    10. Test the connection bandwidth from your computer to the inCLOUD server.  Download the 'iperf3' files from https://iperf.fr  and run it using  the command switch of: iperf3.exe -c 103.226.33.2 -V  or  iperf3.exe -c 103.226.33.5 -V 

Program is running very slow

Use the 'Database Speed' report in Reports > System to give an indication of speed across the network.  If the average speed is:

  • less than 1ms - very good
  • 1 - 2.5ms - okay
  • 2.5 - 4ms - slow(ish)
  • more than 4ms - slow, needs attention 

Check these:

  • Printers.  
    • Delete any printer drivers that are not used. 
    • Make sure you can do a 'Test' print at the Windows level.
    • In SPM/PHM
      Because the text editors in the program use the fonts that are provided by the printer, if these are not available it can slow down the program while it searches for alternate fonts to use.
      • make sure the correct printers are selected in Setup > Workstation > Configuration.  If the font colour is red it means the printer is offline or is unavailable.
      • check the trays are selected in Setup > Printers and that you can do a test print using the 't' button.

  • Windows updates
    • Check there are not any Windows updates waiting to be applied or waiting for a restart of your computer.

  • Network
    • If you are using a wireless connection, make sure you have the full four-bar connection signal (wireless will always be slower than using an ethernet cable)
    • Replace the network cable (it's surprising how often this fixes the problem)
    • Connect to a different network switch
    • Change the network adapter to use IPv4 ahead of IPv6 IPv4 before IPv6 network configuration
  • Virus-checker. 
  • SQL Server Transaction log file is very large.  This should seldom need to get over 1GB.  Check the SQL backup script includes a function to Truncate the Transaction Log.

  • Are you using Hyper-V virtual machines and does the server(s) have Broadcom network cards?  If yes, there is a known problem caused by the Virtual Machine Queues (VMQ) function that is known to cause significant network speed problems and turning it off instantly Improves the performance. 
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2902166

  • Technical - On-premise installations.
    • Using Notepad, open the spm.ini file in the Incisive program directory and find the entry starting "mdb=" and make sure the path to the shared directory does actually exist and that the User has 'Modify' permissions for that directory.
IPv4 before IPv6 network configuration

If a network and SQL Server is not correctly configured to use IPv6 there can be speed related issues while the IPv6 settings are found not to be available and the IPv4 settings are used.  Microsoft have implemented the IPv6 before IPv4 sequence for many years.

Rather than disable IPv6 it is preferable to set Windows to prefer IPv4 over IPv6. This can be done at a computer level or as a Group Policy

Key:  Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters

See information in the following link:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929852/guidance-for-configuring-ipv6-in-windows-for-advanced-users

Error connecting to Database at startup

Occasionally a message may appear when you go to start SPM saying that the database could not be found, or there is no database connection or perhaps even the message just says timeout-expired.

For Advanced connection trouble-shooting view this Knowledgebase article.

There are a number of problems that can cause this to occur.

  1. It is possible after a restart of a server, especially after a Windows update, that one of the SQL Server services has failed to restart and so cannot provide a connection to the Incisive application.

    Follow these steps
    a. On the server/computer where the SQL server is installed, open the SQL Configuration Manager application and check that the SQL Server Engine is running correctly.  If it has stopped you will need to use the option to Start the service.

    b. If you are using SQL Browser to allow the workstations to connect to the SQL Server database you will need to check that this service is running.

    We have seen that a service can become disabled and therefore will not start from within the SQL Server Configuration management tool.  If this is the case you will need to start up the Services snap-in (run services.msc) and set them to start Automatically.

    If you do not have a IT technician who is able to manage this please call the Incisive Helpdesk.

  2. The workstation may not be finding the DNS server and therefore can't resolve the Server\Instance name of the SQL database.  

    Change the DSN (ODBC) setting to use the IP & Port address of the SQL server.  Using a Port address will negate the need to use the Instance name.  Don't use IP\Instance name.

  3. If used, the SQL Browser service on the server may of stopped. 

    Use Services.msc on the server to restart the SQL Browser service.
    If this fails to start, configure the SQL Configuration on the server and also the local DSN settings to use a Port number e.g. 1433.  Configure Firewalls to allow port access

  4. Firewall on the server may be blocking port access.

    Turn off the Firewall on the server,  Test - if connection is successful enable access to Port 1433 TCP and Port 1434 UDP - retest after turning on the firewall.

  5. It's possible to have Classic SPM running ok, but Integrated SPM comes up with a connection error when trying to start.
    The ODBC settings can be correct, and a re-install of the application will not resolve the problem.

    Possible solution - Disable IPv6 in the Network settings of the workstation.