Hi folks,
I’m looking at speeding up load times, especially on mobile with limited data speed. What’s fine on a desktop/laptop with good connection can be more than a bit tedious on the move.
The built-in AI has pointed me towards the number of formulae on the main table in the doc, as well as reducing the number of views and pages. This seems reasonable but can I ask for a bit of fact-checking to help identify the best things to streamline first:
- Is it true that all formulae are calculated for a given row, even if they’re hidden in that view, and the one or two columns are visible to that view that don’t require the formula information?
- Is it true that having more pages in a doc - even if they are hidden - will slow down the load of a given page?
- Is it true that all views of a table arranged on view tabs have to load before you see the first tab?
Anything else to point me towards with this in mind? And are there any tools/extensions to help identify which elements are causing the load time?
With thanks,
David
Hello @David_Walter ,
These are good questions, and they are really important when a doc gets bigger.
I am not a Codan, but a maker, and I ran into these exact same things when some of my docs reached a certain size.
The following are, as far as I know, the answers to your questions:
- That is true
- Mostly true: it does not slow down the load of a given page; it will slow down the load of your doc. Once the doc is loaded, pages open up as quickly as in a small doc (given enough memory and a quick processor on your mobile).
- True (actually, in Coda (SH Docs), this is the same question/answer as question 2
My largest doc became, at some point, unusable. I had been adding many formulas and many views to allow for slightly different uses of my docs and tables. To get my doc to perform better, I limited the number of views drastically; some views I replaced by using filters on one of the views. For some tables, one view with proper filters replaced 5 of 6 views (each of them hurting performance, while filters seem to work more efficiently).
Deleting some formula columns also gave a lot better performance. This is a tradeoff; sometimes the calculated columns are really helpful, but sometimes you can do without. Running an automation at night to update fields that were calculated before can, in some situations, be a solution (but I do prefer real-time for most calculations).
I am desperately waiting for the new (in beta now) database functions that might resolve some of the issues.
There has been talk of not loading all pages when opening a doc to resolve some performance (or security) issues, but it’s been quiet on the front.
Greetings,
Joost
