Introduction
Our products rely on Microsoft 365 and associated services. All performance recommendations on Microsoft 365 will also apply on Powell Software products
User device
Recommended device configuration
All rendering, following the Microsoft best practices, are executing in JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3. The display and most of the calculations for the page rendering is processed by the user’s device. A recent device will have better performances to display a page than an outdated one.
We recommend a minimal configuration:
- Windows 10
- Core I5 Processor
- 8 Go RAM
- SSD Disk
Web Browsers
Powell Software products are compatible and support the latest version of Chrome / Safari / Firefox & Edge. For the best security and functionalities, keep your web browser up to date. All modern browsers should update automatically, but please make sure your browser has auto-updates enabled.
Web Browser Cache
To ensure good performance for the page load, Powell Software uses the browser cache for storing the different JavaScript & data. All the users need to have the browser cache enabled to store these files, in the other case they will load the different resources each time for each loading page from the CDN with a huge impact on the response time and the bandwidth.
Network
Network planning and performance tuning for Microsoft 365.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/enterprise/network-planning-and-performance
Tips
- Firewall: check that there is no IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) filter that could slow down the page rendering.
- Identify if you have a Proxy in your network. Check if it does not cause a bottleneck and if it manages resource caching (JS / images / CSS ..). If the proxy manage the authentication, Removing this part on the Proxy can greatly improve performance. The best is to not use a proxy for Office 365 resources.
- Check DNS resolution time: resolution route can be optimized
- Optimize / Prioritize the network flows (SharePoint, Yammer)
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-365-URLs-and-IP-address-ranges-8548a211-3fe7-47cb-abb1-355ea5aa88a2?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
Additional Microsoft resources
- Microsoft 365 performance tuning using baselines and performance history
- Performance troubleshooting plan for Microsoft 365
Additional resources for Powell Intranet
Navigation
By default, the Global and Current navigations of your site are probably using the « structural navigation » SharePoint setting. Or, as Microsoft is explaining, this kind of navigation can affect the performances:
That’s why we’ll advise you to not use this kind of navigation and select the « Managed navigation » one for both Global and Current navigations. Then, you’ll have to create a new Term Set used with this navigation but you don’t need to really use this Term Set, this is just to unselect the « Structural navigation » setting. Moreover, this setting is only linked to the Publishing experience, so if you’re in Modern experience you won’t have any impact in your navigation, but you’ll see the difference on the page load. If you are in publishing and you don’t want to use the features linked to this Managed navigation, you can continue to use your navigation exactly like before in creating/editing links.
You’ll have to do the modification on each site and subsite.
To access this setting, here is the url: https://YourTenant.sharepoint.com/sites/YourSite/_layouts/15/areanavigationsettings.aspx
For more information, here is the Microsoft documentation.
Microsoft 365 CDN
Using Microsoft 365 Private and Public CDNs are Microsoft best practices to improve your site performances. You can refer the URLs you want to add to the Office 365 CDNs with a PowerShell script or from Powell Manager in your tenant settings as followed:
If you need any information, please refer to the Microsoft documentation :
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/enterprise/use-office-365-cdn-with-spo
Image size
In SharePoint On-line, the size of the images have a huge impact on performance. You need to use images under 200kb.
Microsoft recommendation: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/image-optimization-for-sharepoint-online-c7edb02a-fdab-4f91-9a20-cba01dad28ef
A simple way to check the image sizes in a page : under Chrome or Edge, with the developer toolbar, go in the network and select img.
After the activation of the Office 365 CDNs, you can still improve the performances linked to images in using renditions.
Indeed, in the mapping of your search & graph webparts, you can select a rendition:
To understand the images rendition impact in SharePoint, a good article on the subject: http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2016/03/office-365-sharepoint-performance-image-renditions.html
Widgets
First of all, our recommendation regarding the number of webparts per page is 6. If you use more than 6 webparts, you can have performance issues linked to it.
Then, you have to know that all the webparts are not taking the same load time.
- The embed webparts (Instagram, Twitter, Stream, etc..) for example who access external APIs are taking more time to load. So if it’s possible, we’ll advise you to not use it on home pages.
- The Search webparts can take some time to load as well depending the number of items. So that’s why you need to enable the cache. From 15 min to 30 min is good. We know that it can be difficult to manage for the contributors to have the cache activated on all the webparts. So if it’s not possible to enable it for all the webparts on your pages, you can select webparts where the content is not changing a lot, like for example “Useful links” and so on.
Multilingual Portal (variation)
If you’re using variations in your portal, a quick change can be done on the main logo redirection to improve the loading time.
Today when you click on the logo, you’re directly redirected to the root site, then the language is calculated to redirect you to the right subsite. Sometimes it can take some time, so what can be done is the modify that URL to by default redirect to the same language of the current site.
For example:
Today, if I’m English and I click on the logo from anywhere in the portal, I’ll be redirected to the English home page. But with this change, if I’m in the French HR site and I click on the logo, I’ll be redirected to the French home page, even if I’m English.
This modification will change the current way of working of that link but if you’re ok with it, that can improve the performances.
To do so, you have to clone the Header HTML in Powell Manager and replace <cdn-logo></cdn-logo> by: <cdn-logo url="{{'[TENANT_ABSOLUTE_URL]/sites/[VARIATION_RELATIVE_URL]' | replaceNavigationToken}}"></cdn-logo>
Then, select your new custom HTML Header in your Powell Manager theme.
Performance analytics
We recommend to use Azure Application Insights from the Application Performance Management (APM) service used to monitor live applications
- Detect performance anomalies
- Get powerful analytics tools to help you diagnose issues and understand what users actually do with your app
- It's designed to help you continuously improve performance and usability
Powell supports Azure Application Insights Analytics:
-Page loading time per Browser
-Page loading time per Location
We recommend to use Azure Application Insights to have the complete report of your access and not to have a test done by a single user.
Azure App insights key can be set at site collection level in Powell Manager.
Here is the documentation to generate your own App Insights key :
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/website-monitoring
Additional resources
As a partner or customer, discover additional resources on our private Learning Center like performance check lists and more... https://pow365.sharepoint.com/sites/learningcenter/training-tips/SitePages/Any-performance-issues-.aspx