Resource Planning portlets slow with 'Instance' or 'OBS' access

Products

Clarity PPM SaaS Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

On the Weekly Detail or other resource portlets in Clarity, the query takes a huge amount of time to return results. You may also see users are having trouble getting to or unable to access the portlet or tab. The performance degrades as the data volume increases. This happens when the user has instance or OBS Level access to a larger number of resources. You may also see an issue where results never return, the page spins, and eventually, you receive an error 500. Monitoring developer tools, the action is in pending status and may time out after about 5 minutes.

Other areas this may be reported:

Allocations tab
Booking Status portlet
When adding both the Weekly Detail and Scenario portlets to a page.

Steps to Reproduce:

Log in to the application as an administrator user
Create a user profile granting 'Instance' or 'OBS' security access rights to view or book other resources for resource planning purposes (it does not matter how many instances the user has access granted to view)
Example: Grant 'Resource - View Book', 'Resource - View Book - All' and 'Project - View Management' to a user through an OBS unit
Log in as the user-defined with non-global security access rights to view resources
Navigate to Home, Resource Planning, Weekly Detail or Booking Status portlet

Expected Result: To display results in a reasonable time regardless of the security access granted to the user.

Actual Result: It takes a long time to display results or never returns results. Performance degrades as the number of instances increases granted to the user access.

Environment

Release: All
Component: Clarity Resource Management

Cause

The intention of the design and use of these portlets is for a Resource Manager having access to a limited number of resources in the system for managing the planning aspect of investment work. It is not intended for use as a reporting tool, please use a reporting tool or the data warehouse.

Resolution

As referenced in the Resource Management section in techdocs, configuring a user with Instance or OBS Unit access for a larger number of resources may impact the performance of these portlets. There are a few configuration changes that can be implemented that will help to improve the performance for these portlets. You can implement some or all configuration ideas.

Grant the global access right 'Resource - View Book - All'.

Note this configuration change will allow the user to view all resources in the system. In extreme cases where a resource manager manages a large portion of the user base the use of global rights might be considered. Warning: Granting of global rights can cause other performance issues when aggregation rows are added to the portlets.

Configure filter settings

Option 1: Remove 'Show all' Button

When navigating to the page with the portlet and to reduce the amount of data returned in the results, the 'Show All' button can be removed in the Filter section by configuring at least one filter attribute as a 'Required' field.
The field that is configured as 'Required' can be any available field. When a 'Required' field is configured as a visible attribute in the Filter Section, it will ask for a default value. Once the field has been configured and saved, this becomes the system default filter criteria and you will no longer see the 'Show All' button. Be sure to 'Publish' this configuration change. NOTE: Publishing this change will erase any user-saved configurations or filters.

Option 2: Set "Do not show results until I filter"

Log in to the application as an administrator user
Administration, Studio: Portlets
Search for and open the 'Booking Status' portlet (ID = projmgr.bookingStatus)
Go to List Column Section, Options
Select/checkmark the filter option 'Do not show results until I filter'
Click 'Save' button
Go to the portlet General Tab, click 'Publish' button - this will reset all end user portlet personal configuration on this portlet
Repeat steps 3-7 for the 'Resource Workloads' portlet (ID = projmgr.resourceWorkloads) or other Resource Planning portlets In Studio, change the portlet configuration option not to show any results until the user provides filtering criteria. Making this change will force the user to provide specific filtering to improve performance response times.

Option 3: Create a custom default filter

End users can create a custom default filter that returns a smaller subset of records.

If the user is currently facing an issue where the page spins, first wait about 5 minutes for the portlet to display (Even if it displays with an error 500)
Input a value in a filter field to return a smaller subset of results (Example: Populate an Investment Manager)
Click the Save Filter button
Populate a Filter Name and click the Default check box
Click Save and Return
You can then change the filter as needed or create additional saved filters to utilize as need as well.