Dashboard is painfully slow - how do you guys manage to get anything done efficiently?

[BabsBabsBabs]

Hi all - we have tried every single device owned by the family and staff, every browser known to man, many networks in locations all over the country - and we still cannot manage to efficiently accomplish much in the Dashboard. It spins, it lags, every single click is another painful 10-30 second wait to move onto the next click. We waste way too much time waiting for it to load, only to forget what we were even in there to do by the time the feature we need loads. We feel like we should be invoicing Square for our time at this point. 

FYI:

• No VPN being used 
• Fiber internet with no speed issues 
• Yes, we rebooted all of the machines and cleared caches etc etc etc - so please do not suggest that our devices or networks are the issue. They aren’t. This one is one the Square dev team 🙂 

How in the world are you guys getting any admin work done quickly and efficiently??

[Donnie-M]

@BabsBabsBabs Do you care to maybe do a screen record of something that is not sensitive, to see what areas and things are taking a long time to load?  I can get a sales summary to load completely from scratch in under 8 seconds..the online dashboard is not the fastest way to do some things.  Sometimes the point of sale app will be faster, but the nature of the cloud system is part of why there is a small lag, not instant.

What kind of data set are you working with? days, weeks, months, quarters, etc?  Have you thought about exporting historical data offline to use excel or something else?  What part of your day are you sitting there waiting for something to load?  Maybe just take a day and jot down every time you think we got slower than you should.  That will help figure out where the system is being the system so to speak.  

[MayaP]

Thank you, these are some great follow-up questions! @Donnie-M 

[MayaP]

Hey @BabsBabsBabs, I’m really sorry to hear you’ve been having trouble loading Dashboard. That’s never fun!

As @Donnie-M  mentioned, it would be helpful if you could provide a video and answers to the questions he asked above. Could you also run a speed test and share the results?

Would it be okay if I impersonate your Dashboard to see if I experience the same issue?

[MudFire_Dex]

Something that used to happen here is all of our members using our WIFI to stream slowed some things down although I have never experienced a 30s lag unless Square wasn't up - we separated the WIFI into a 5g for Square POS and our office (speaking for the Dashboard use on registers, chromebooks, and our desktops). I too can get a sales summary in around 5s and most things load instantly. We do the export sometimes and that is also super fast for us, so I'd second everything above from @Donnie-M Additionally, could I ask what your average transactions per day are @BabsBabsBabs ? Just curious if you are loading a super high number of transactions I would then tag in someone like Chip to see what the experience is for Piper's. @TheRealChipA would also know other high volume folks to tag.

[TheRealChipA]

Honestly, this does not sound like a local network problem at all.  But, I'm at a loss for what could be causing it.  Reading everything that @BabsBabsBabs posted and taking it at face value leads me to suspect an issue with the Square server that houses their account.  It sounds to me like an issue that is more specific to them, caused by a failing or underperforming server.  That is the more likely issue from what I'm reading @MayaP, especially since @BabsBabsBabs was very clear about the fact that this it NOT necessarily about data as much as it is about navigation.  It should not take 10-30 seconds to just navigate around the dashboard and open up pages.  I'd hope that the engineers could spoof the account and try to replicate the issue because this definitely sounds more like an infrastructure issue given that they can replicate it on MANY devices and networks.

[MudFire_Dex]

Are servers allocated at random or geographically? Curious because when we were with Pinnacle there was a fire that took out the server location we were on - and we got moved to a different server after being down a few days and then performance was dramatically different - I forgot that until reading your message above because it was years ago. It would be interesting to tag a few sellers that were nearby if it is geographic and see what their performance is? One would think there would be more posts about it? This lag would anger me in daily operations too @BabsBabsBabs 😞

[TheRealChipA]

I am not sure how Square does that.  But I'm sure there are backup servers for all of us, too.  Redundancy is standard for that sort of thing.  Anyway, because of laws in almost all countries that don't allow hosting in foreign countries, servers are probably geographic at first.  After that, again I'm guessing but I'm betting it is random within that country/region.

[Donnie-M]

@TheRealChipA I wonder if it would help to try a different browser, incognito, and check for addons etc.  I am going to throw this out there, but it also mimics something with spyware/malware or a malfunctioning browser add on.  I mean with what they have done, it shouldn't be anything like that, but sometimes google account settings are the same even on 2 different systems.  

[TheRealChipA]

Or course, that is possible.  But I agree with you that this would be pretty remote.  What would really help diagnose this is for Square Support/Ecom team to spoof the account on their devices and see if they can verify this.  I'm sure that they have diagnostic tools to help with that.  We can't here, of course, since that would require us having the account credentials -- definitely not a good thing.

[Donnie-M]

Just to add, I had to replace a linksys Nighthawk router that was about 5 years old last week.  It "worked" but the 2.4ghz radio was going bad, I had dropped it down to basic connectivity in the configs, and that helped for a while, but anything connected to that band, would disconnect, and act like it was connected, but was painfully slow.  It is really really frustrating with intermittent hardware problems.  I would try some things to rule stuff out too.  Speedtest.net is great to really diagnose connections and see if you are doing what you should.

[DinaLRosenberg]

Our dashboard sometimes lags.. not as slow as what you're describing but slow. I make sure to keep my computer updated with the current operating system and that seems to help.

[MouMan]

We get the same problem making the dashboard almost unusable.   I can live with it for reporting etc but for adding or editing inventory it is a nightmare.   Working at home with 300mb up and down.  Pleased help, really at the point of looking at other systems 

[MayaP · Accepted solution]

Thanks everyone for reaching out and sharing your insights here. I truly appreciate it!

I want to emphasize that I won’t be able to file a single ticket for this. Each seller account will need its own ticket so the team can review each individual setup and properly diagnose what’s going on. Please reach out to Support so our team can investigate further.

Thank you for working with us on this. If you need anything else, please let me know.

@BabsBabsBabs @MouMan @TheRealChipA @Donnie-M @MudFire_Dex 

[hopemajor]

I've been having the same issue - has yours been resolved yet?

[Calypso]

I am having a similar issue. Has anyones spinning circles been resolved yet? This is maddening.

[jordanfb]

I'm a software engineer, been building on the web for 16 years, and yes this Square Dashboard is incredibly - painfully! - slow. I'm not sure I can stay with Square, this would have a direct impact on our in-store customer experience.

I just got set up this evening for a small business I own. I'm a first time user, chose Square after much research and because the company has a good reputation in the software industry (I'm sure I've applied to jobs at Square before, never worked there tho).

I was shocked at how terribly slow the web app is. And no, it's not me. I have a fiber connection, all other websites are performing as I normally experience them. Square Dashboard is legit slow!

For the Square team:

- It's all of the web app (app.square.com). There is no video of a particular page or interaction that will help - it's all of it

- Both page performance and API response times are slow

- Page performance is being impacted by the absolute insane amounts of JavaScript loaded and executed by this app - 87 MB! This app is a yet another React failure 😞

- Page performance is also impacted by the loading strategy of these pages - e.g. 21 more MB of data fetched on page load, that's before I've interacted with anything, and the rendering is so janky as a result

- Page performance is impacted overall by 120 MB of assets, again that's on page load and before I'ver interacted with anything

- API response times are frequently 500ms or more, and the UI is built without optimistic rendering so every interaction is impacted by half second delays (or more, often a lot more!) 

- All three core web vital metrics are red or yellow, occasionally INP is green but often yellow or red

- Tested Safari and Chrome on my MacBook with Chrome performing just a little better but still awful

Pro tip: give your frontend team six weeks to delete like half of all their dependencies (that amount of js is criminal!), rewrite their bloated design system, fix loading strategy, and help the backend team pinpoint really slow endpoints. I can't see how small businesses are tolerating such a slow POS experience? Employees are probably assuming that's just the way the website is and business owners aren't experiencing it for themselves or they too a unaware how fast the web should be.

[DOKOcreations]

That explains a lot! I am completely unable to use the dashboard on my old iPad (Safari, all up to date) which I use for most of my daily work, including running my Etsy shop. I have no problem with any other websites or apps, just this frustrating piece of bloatware! I urgently had to get some library items and discounts updated before a craft show this weekend, and finally gave up and had to go to my office to do it on a PC. I tried using the app on my iPhone, but automatic discounts can only be edited via the dashboard. Very frustrating, because other than this, I really like Square!

[DaveD123]

It has been absolutely terrible for me also. Every other website loads at normal speeds. Square has been sooo terrible.