Insight into user and network variables which can impact the performance of Atlas

The performance or loading times of Atlas will differ from user to user and from location to location, even from different times of the day depending on local speeds and internet connections. It is important to remember that Atlas is not just a webpage, it is an online system, and SharePoint pages have various components and connections which are loading content dynamically based on permissions, tagging, and other configurations to make the intranet useful for the end user.

There are 3 main areas which can impact the performance of Atlas and SharePoint Online:

• The user’s device (laptop/computer/phone, browser)
• The user’s connectivity network (such as internet connection, signal strength & ISP, including any additional security services or connections such as VPNs)
• SharePoint

If you are experiencing slow load times please consider if any of the following points may be affecting performance and page load times.

• A user’s device (laptop/computer/phone, browser)
  • Low device memory
  • Old browser versions
  • Generally slow or very old device
  • Multiple tabs
  • Multiple browsers
  • Screensharing or external user access
  • Device running large programs or complex tasks
  • Browser caching settings
  • Additional security monitoring services running in the background of the device
• Users internet connection, signal strength & ISP (including any additional security services or connections such as VPNs)
  • Wired connections through LANs will be faster and more dependable
  • Slower incoming internet speed (megabytes per second (Mbps) – this varies from house-to-house, office-to-office, city-to-city and country-to-country
  • Having low signal strength (being further away from the router)
  • Quality & age of router
    • Even cable quality or damaged cables can affect speed
  • How many people are using the internet in the location and how heavy their traffic might be (i.e. house or office)
  • Additional security monitoring services running in the background of the network, such as firewalls which are monitoring incoming traffic from the internet. This is likely to occur in offices
  • VPN services if needed to connect to a dedicated environment – this is likely to throttle traffic and can compound any issues above. VPNs will never increase connection speeds)
  • Microsoft Office 365 tenants & SharePoint Online services
• SharePoint
  • Vanilla out-of-the-box set-up, sites or pages with no further customization will be faster
  • Highly customized pages with a multitude of connections will take longer to fully load
  • Large images will take longer to load
  • Dynamic content will need to load each time, pulling in data and content from a different area, generally taking longer to load than a page with only rich text in

We would advise that if you are experiencing performance issues you follow the instructions in this article here which shows how to investigate and quantify your Atlas performance into readable data, with one or more users, at different times of the day.