Weblink.tapeapp.com very slow to load

[Luis]

Is there an issue with opening the weblink.tapeapp.com links? Those links are taking a substantial amount of time to open (more than 2 mins to open). This link (from Tape Partners webinar landing page) took 2 mins and 15 seconds to open.

This has never happened before. Are you guys having the same issue?

[dirk_s]

Indeed - it took around 20secs the first time, around 10 secs the second time for me.

[Leo]

Hi @Luis,

Thanks a lot for your report — that definitely sounds like a bug.

I just ran a test on my end and saw load times between 1 and 3 seconds, which would generally be within a normal range. However, if @dirk_s is also experiencing delays of up to 20 seconds, then something’s clearly not right.

Just two days ago, we updated our share link structure to make external URLs shorter and simpler for the Forms beta. It’s possible that this change introduced a regression, and we’ll definitely look into it.

We’ll start investigating right away and follow up with a fix as soon as we’ve identified the cause.

Thanks again for flagging this and for your patience!

Best regards,
Leo

[andrew.cranston]

Not sure if this is related, but the API has been slow and has been timing out a lot over the past couple of days. The status page would indicate a poor performance from the API over a prolonged period. Is there any status update on this. What is the genesis for a status update to let users know that something is happening and that actions are being taken to resolve it?

[Leo]

You’re probably right, @andrew.cranston! I’m increasingly convinced that the recent delays in opening weblinks are due to high API load and not related to our recent changes to the link structure. The root cause appears to be strong customer growth and, in particular, increased usage of our services via the API.

We’re actively working on a solution by isolating specific services and moving them onto dedicated server instances. This should help reduce side effects and lead to more stable and consistent performance overall.

We’ll definitely follow up as soon as this infrastructure work is completed.

Thanks a lot for your support and best regards,
Leo

[1F2Ns]

Love the transparency

[Leo]

Hi @Luis @andrew.cranston @1F2Ns,

Just a quick update on the issue we’ve been investigating.

After taking a closer look, it turns out that my initial assumption, that the slow opening of web links might be caused by high API load, was not correct.

In fact, the time it takes to open a web link is entirely determined by how quickly the corresponding automation job starts running after the automation is triggered. Our APIs and automations run on fully isolated infrastructure, so they cannot interfere with each other.

We’ve identified two main reasons for the fluctuating opening times:

• Shorter delays (around 10–15 seconds) are on our side. Based on our analysis, we’ve seen that increasing usage has pushed us close to our current capacity. To address this, we’ll be gradually scaling up the number of available automation slots and improving how resources are allocated. We’ll let you know as soon as this is fully rolled out.
• Longer delays (for example, up to 2 minutes as Luis experienced) are very likely caused by a backlog of automation jobs already waiting in the queue. In these cases, your weblink flow has to wait its turn until previous jobs are completed. This effect is, of course, amplified by the issue above, and can also be reproduced by manually triggering jobs during busy periods.

On the API side, we’ve already made great progress in isolating key services to minimize such timing variations. For instance, ProcFu now uses a dedicated API endpoint with its own set of resources, making it completely independent from regular API usage. Huge thanks to @andreas-globi for integrating the new endpoint right away after we provided it – that was a great first step.

We’re currently working on further service isolations, which will help make API performance more stable and predictable going forward.

I’ll keep you posted once the next changes are in place and as soon as all measures to sustainably support the increased usage from new customers are live.

Warm regards,
Leo