We have identified that the search box at the top of NU Service in the analysts view produces the following error when searching with free text.

“There has been an unexpected error. Click Continue to return to the previous page.
Could not find file ‘\\campus\ha\ITSM\LIVE\KB\index\_e.cfs’.”

We have a problem record open (4000074) and are investigating the issue.

I can confirm that the search works when searching on a ticket reference.

Work to replace the web servers is currently in test stage; it is anticipated that the new web servers will be moved into the live environment (without the need for system downtime) during week commencing 25th May.

We are also in the process of testing an upgrade of NU Service to ensure it is running on the latest version. The aim is to go live with the upgrade during week commencing 1st June. Downtime will be communicated when this has been scheduled. Please note that this upgrade will not release new or changed functionality.

Our next steps after this work is to plan a development cycle to release new and/or improve existing system functionality. The planning for this will entail reviewing our issues and wish list database* that many of you have been contributing too. We acknowledge that improvements to visibility of the history within a ticket is a high priority.

*At the moment this is a private database used by the SP team for planning other purposes and is not suitable for sharing.  We may look at an appropriate way to share some relevant information such as this in the future.

There are two things that you can do to help us to understand more about the performance issues you experience:

1. On occasions when you experience issues with NU Service (of any sort) it is useful to know which web server was serving your NU Service session. To find this information delete the end of the URL to leave only https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk/ within your address bar and type secure after the forward slash. For example:

If an analysts screen froze while they were reading a ticket with the URL: https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk/LDSD.WebAccess.Integrated/wd/object/open.rails?class_name=ProblemManagement.Problem&key=82377f3f-6007-489d-b3f8-3d30ba4a6210. The URL should be edited to become: https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk/secure

You will then be presented with a page of code, much of which can be ignored; the only part we are interested in is the first line of text at the top of the page (formatted in BOLD). Examples include: itsmweb3.ncl.ac.uk or itsmweb4.ncl.ac.uk. It is this text that indicates the web server in use at the time of the issues.

Please provide this piece of information together with the date/time of the issues and a description of the issue to the Service Desk.

2. If you perceive NU Service to be running slow for you, you can use F12 developer tools in Chrome to gather the actual times taken for page loads.
   To find this information, see our ‘how to guide’: F12 Developer tools.
   If you are concerned about load times then please provide details of the times together with the actions you were carrying out on the system and the date/time.

Thank you for any feedback.

Our investigations and work with technical teams remain ongoing to address issues affecting NU Service performance and reliability.

To address system reliability issues we are building new web servers to phase out and fully replace the old ones. These will be fully tested before adding to the live environment. Any system downtime or affect to users will be communicated in advance.

Investigations into the performance issues of NU Service uncovered an underlying problem with a component of one of the web services. This caused some users to experience page load delays of approx. 20 seconds. The issue has now been fixed which has restored performance to its usual level.

Work will continue in this area with the aim of further improving system performance.

Thank you to our technical teams.

We have carried out some minor changes and maintenance work with a view to improving  the performance of NU Service. However, feedback shows that the system is still running slow for most users.

We have some next steps planned and will pursue conversations and testing as a matter of urgency.

In our ongoing efforts to address the issues with NU Service system performance, we will be carrying out a maintenance activity on Tuesday 21th April from 17:30 (GMT). All users must log out by this time; otherwise your connection to the system will be terminated.

The system will be available for normal use from 08:00 on Wednesday 22nd April (GMT). Many thanks for your patience whilst we complete this work.

After the work is completed we welcome your feedback on NU Service system performance. Please email: nuit-service-process@ncl.ac.uk.

We are aware that some users of NU Service have experienced slow system performance. We have been investigating this issue with the vendor and colleagues from Applications Support and the Infrastructure Systems team.
Activities done to address the issue so far have included a re-build of the database indexes. This will now be scheduled as a periodic maintenance task, with interim re-organisation of DB indexes happening more frequently; as the latter does not require system downtime.

In addition, we are currently investigating more we can do to make NU Service more performant. This includes reviewing database properties, as directed by the vendor and also improving design and configuration aspects that will contribute to increasing NU Service page load times.

We will keep you updated as appropriate and may call on your user experience feedback after work is carried out.