Substantial delays on order creation from admin

[chuckdvc]

This has been happening since the upgrade in December. Just checking to see if anybody else has this issue or if there is a fix for it.

When entering an order and the next button to go to shipping options we get a 15-30 second delay. Once shipping option is selected we get another 20-30 second delay to populate shipping into the cart. Switching payment methods takes another 20-30 seconds. Then the payment itself can take 30 seconds-2 minutes.

This does not happen on the customer side, only when admin enters an order.

Sometimes the page never reflects the order completed but open a new page and its there. The order confirmation email is not sent.

Once the order is in the system we can change shipping methods or add items and payments with no problem whatsoever.

While taking phone orders this is very awkward. We have dead silence so i have instructed my people to make small talk with customers while they wait for these functions to transpire.

[Katie]

Hi,

I'll do some digging and see what I can find out. What version are on? Is it R6 build 6169? What shipping methods or services do you use? USPS, UPS? Do you have a lot of shipping methods appearing when the page responds? Do you have any particular items in the cart, such as Kits or huge orders? What payment methods are you using?

Sorry for all the questions...

Katie

[Katie]

The page that is slow is Admin/Orders/Create/CreateOrder4.aspx - is that correct? Shipping and payment is taking place here.

[chuckdvc]

I just checked, we are indeed using GOLD R6 build 6169.

We have USPS and UPS shipping services. My developer thinks that it is requests being sent to the shipping services... but aren't those requests being made no matter whether we on the admin side or client side? We see no delay on client's side.

I will say though that we do have a bunch of shipping options because there is no way to account for insurance on USPS. I had to make a Priority Mail 1,2,3 for each price range that separates the different insurance rates. (Aside: I think this would easily be handled by adding an option to change the handling fee as a percentage of the order instead of a percentage of the shipping charge)

The problem happens no matter what we put in the cart, single items, kits, you name it.

There is a delay between CreateOrder3.aspx and CreateOrder4.aspx of about 30sec. Then the big delay occurs when submitting the CreateOrder4.aspx page.

This is our biggest challenge with our software right now, it really detracts from our professionalism.

Thanks

[jguengerich]

You may be able to use ASP.NET tracing to find which part of the code on CreateOrder3 and CreateOrder4 is taking a lot of time.
Your server would need Tracing installed (on Windows Server 2008 R2, it is in the "Health and Diagnotics" section of the Web Server role Services list).
Your web.config needs to have tracing on (in the system.web section):

Code: Select all

    <trace enabled="true" requestLimit="100" pageOutput="false" localOnly="false" mostRecent="true" />

Put Trace.Write(...) statements at appropriate points in your code in CreateOrder3.aspx.cs and CreateOrder4.aspx.cs.
Open another tab in your browser and go to yoursite/trace.axd (not an actual file, ASP.Net creates it "on the fly"). Each time you load or post back to a page, another line will be added (if you refresh the trace.axd page). Click on the line for the details, which will show you the time elapsed as each part of your page executes. There are some default events that are always shown, plus the output of any Trace.Write statements you have.

Just make sure you change your web.config to disable tracing (enabled="false") or at least make it local only (localOnly="true") when you are done. Local only means you can view the tracing info in the server's browser, but not from anywhere else.

[jguengerich]

A little more info...
The transition from CreateOrder3 to CreateOrder4 involves a Post to CreateOrder3 (which runs at least Page_Init, Page_Load, and ContinueButton_Click) and a Get of CreateOrder4 (which runs at least Page_Init, Page_Load, Page_PreRender). I say "at least" because if any of the list controls are bound, there may be [control]_DataBound or [control]_ItemDataBound methods that run, plus whatever methods any of these Page or Control event methods call.

[Katie]

Sorry, I missed your update yesterday. For some reason, I didn't get an email notification...
Thanks Jay for stepping in with your great advice for troubleshooting. This is a little technical for me though

So, I would have to agree with your developer that the 'most likely' reason there are delays is because of the shipping. Probably USPS. Are all of your shipping methods available to customers on the retail side, or do you have some that are only available to certain groups/admin users? Do you have a lot of zones, or zones with many postal codes?

I will try to have one of our developers take a quick look at the code in these 2 pages to see if anything looks suspicious.

(Aside: I think this would easily be handled by adding an option to change the handling fee as a percentage of the order instead of a percentage of the shipping charge)

I don't know if it was you who requested this, but it will be a feature coming in our next version. You'll be able to calculate handling charges as fixed, % of order, or % of shipping. Just thought you might want to know.

[chuckdvc]

Katie, it was me who requested that, many times, for years. So glad it is coming. Time frame?

Yes the same options are available to the customer side. I tend to suspect its not the shipping quotes since it happens in 3 places, the shipping quote is delayed little compared to the last 2 delays. I just did a test by adding a product to a previous order and recalculated shipping, it returned the quotes for the recalculation in about 3-5 seconds. So getting the quotes is not taking that long.

[abradley]

Hello, I am trying to help chuck out with his site problems.

Thanks for the advice Jay, I will try that out this weekend and see if I can narrow down the problem. I suck at asp.net and the microsoft stack in general, wish me luck

[chuckdvc]

CreateOrder3.aspx?
to
CreateOrder4.aspx?
to
actually putting shipping selection into the cart- takes 20-40 seconds
then
Payment processing takes same amount of time.

Then if you click defer payment selection it again takes forever as well as when you actual click the defer payment button.

Once the order is created there are no problems whatsoever doing any of these functions.

Now its happening with greater frequency on the user side and its getting worse.

[Katie]

Are you hosted on a shared server?

You said earlier that there were "a bunch of shipping options". How many do you have total?

Thanks
Katie

[chuckdvc]

Nope, In fact I have 2 servers, 1 for live and one for development. We poured the resources to it. Oh 31. A majority is brackets for different value postal packages. BUT I can change the shipment and recalculate and it is almost instantaneous. Same with payment. Say i ad a payemnt after the order has been created, its instant, Once the order has been created these functions are instant.

[jmestep]

Do you have a lot of tax rules/use a tax gateway?

[Katie]

I was able to do some testing on Chuck's website today. It is very very strange. The longest delay is trying to get a response back from the Authorize.net gateway. The shipping setup is complex and I'm not surprised it's taking some time to come back with the rates, but it is also true that the shipping is much faster on the retail side than on the admin side. We're probably going to need to get access to the server in order to figure out what could be going on.

Chuck said this started happening after upgrading back Dec. I just can't figure out why no one else is reporting the same problems.

[chuckdvc]

Not sure if you tried to do a payment after the order was entered. If we do a defer payment (which takes like 30-60 seconds to switch to the option then another 20-30 after clicking the defer payment button) then enter the payment after the order is created, there is no delay on payment. Same goes for shipping calculation.

[chuckdvc]

James, we do have a sales tax in our state and an exempted group as we sell to resellers as well as government agency's. So only 1 simple tax that's exempt for those outside KY or those in the exempted group.

I did buy some support today. Will see how that goes. I may be looking for an established developer who specializes in Able Commerce.

[chuckdvc]

After hours of testing and doing things such as moving the sight with fresh install to a different data center, the server has most likely been ruled out. What Randy did discover is that the issue is not happening with every user group. So I did a test today with a user by changing his group. We do have several groups. I found that the Admin, software default groups, didn't have this problem. SO the problem can be isolated to user groups.

[chuckdvc]

Thanks to Katie for helping with this issue. Come to find out it was a user group and payment method issue. Since the upgrade gave all the unassigned users the default group status I thought great, I can now only allow Amex to be used on that default group(a group with no discounts offered). I didnt want to take amex for the discount groups so I did not select them. Fix to the problem of the delay was to set Amex as "ALL Groups".

That means there is still an issue with user groups as I chose to utilize them but the delay is gone. For now its worth paying the higher amex fee on my discount groups to not have the delay.