The information in this article applies to:
This article discusses why calendar data entry may be slower at times and includes information on various options that affect calendar performance. Information provided in this article can be used to optimize your particular installation.
You may have noticed that at times it may take longer to display the graphical calendar or to save a calendar record from the graphical calendar than it does at other times. For example, saving a calendar record from the Calendar file may take less than a second whereas saving a similar calendar record from the graphical calendar may take 3 seconds and sometimes even more than 20 seconds. Differences in the time it takes to perform these tasks are not typically noticeable if running on a standalone system or when you are the only user on the network. However, when running across a network with other users, many factors come into play, with the net result that the time required may at times be significantly more noticeable than other times.
When a calendar record is saved, many processes occur. In addition to the processes that occur as part of saving the calendar record(s), the same processes required to display the calendar are again performed. Thus, in addition to saving the calendar records, the calendar has to refresh again.
Let's take a look at what affects the calendar performance when working on a network.
First of all, the obvious--your hardware affects performance. The faster your server is, the faster the performance will be. If you are using a slower computer for your server, your performance will be affected. The type of connection being used will reflect your performance. If you are using 10 Mb Ethernet instead of Gigabit Ethernet, your performance will be affected.
The traffic on your network can significantly affect how long it takes to display the calendar or save a calendar record. For example, you may find that it normally takes approximately 2 seconds to save a calendar record first thing in the morning. But later in the day, when all other employees are logged into the network and performing various tasks, you may find that occasionally it takes 20 seconds or longer to save a calendar record. This is normal, particularly if other users are performing intensive disk I/O functions (such as other users copying large folders to other areas on the file server's hard drive).
Informal testing indicates that Vista networking performance may be slower than Windows XP. We tested on two identical computer/hardware setups, one with Windows XP and one with Windows Vista with both computers connected to a Windows 2003 server. Saving a calendar record from the Calendar (and refreshing the Calendar) using the Windows Vista machine consistently took approximately 40% longer than saving the calendar record from the Windows XP machine. As a result, we believe in many situations that it takes Vista longer to refresh the calendar.
The following options are ones that are easy for you to experiment with.
Various display settings that can be changed while viewing the calendar will affect the time it takes to display or refresh the calendar.
Various settings in the Calendar Properties will affect the time it takes to display or refresh the calendar.
The following setting in the Calendar Properties will affect your entire system performance.
How much extra time do these settings take? That is a very good question and the answer depends on many factors as previously discussed. The best thing to do is try it. Is the amount of time required noticeable to you on your network? Is the value provided by the feature worth the time it costs in performance? Only you can answer that.
The following factors do not affect the performance of the calendar refresh:
In some cases, you may find that saving a calendar record from the Calendar File is slower than expected. This may occur when integrating calendar records with Outlook and not having Outlook open. When integrating calendar records to Outlook, the information is sent to Outlook whenever a calendar record is saved regardless whether Outlook is open or not. If Outlook is not open when you save a calendar record, PracticeMaster silently loads Outlook, saves the information, and silently unloads Outlook. Although the integration appears seamless to the user when Outlook is not open, the time spent loading and unloading Outlook increases how long it takes to complete the operation. As a solution to this potential delay, we recommend having Outlook open when running PracticeMaster. You can easily test how this affects your save times by timing how long it takes to save a calendar record in PracticeMaster when Outlook is open, then timing how long it takes to save a calendar record in PracticeMaster when Outlook is closed, and comparing the two times.
Technical Note: You can use the Task Manager to see whether Outlook is running or not.
A commonly asked question is whether the Client Server Version will improve performance in this area. The answer is somewhat, but not a great deal. Informal testing suggests an approximate 25% improvement. The Calendar refresh screen logic is very complicated and is already optimized regardless whether CSV is being used. We use the minimum number of database calls to provide the information that is needed to display the required information. We are heavily dependent upon the predefined calendar indexes to make the minimum number of calls, which helps explain why CSV does not provide significant improvement.
STI KB Article R10008 - Troubleshooting Performance and Speed
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