Managing SharePoint support for over 100 clients, our expert team have learnt that most SharePoint Support issues have these causes:
Sluggish SharePoint
Most of our clients are alerted to SharePoint problems by an unexplained drop in performance levels:
Common Causes and Solutions
Insufficient Server Resource
On premises versions of SharePoint require significant server resource to run optimally. Your SharePoint farm will normally include multiple servers to handle load:
The specification of these servers is determined by the amount of data that you are hosting and the amount of access that is required – overall bandwidth across the machines.
If the farm does not have sufficient resource available to host SharePoint for the correct number of users, then it will struggle to meet demand at peak times.
Assessing the suitability of your current configuration provides insight into the root of the problem. This creates a roadmap that will upgrade the farm to a more appropriate specification.
Typically, our team analyses your SharePoint performance over a period of time, running diagnostic reports to identify periods where responses are noticeably slower than others. This data allows us to measure the required resource levels and tailor a solution. In some cases, where there is significant variation in demand, we may recommend migrating to a virtual network and hosting SharePoint in Microsoft Azure. This allows greater flexibility to add virtual machines at peak times or alter the specification of the network to cope with higher demand levels. This flexibility means that you only use (and pay for) the resources that you need – saving you money on a static cloud hosting solution.
Missing Files / Indexing Issues
In some cases, slow access times for SharePoint may be caused by deleted files which are required for other files to load. When a dependency is broken, the server will expend additional resources on searching for files, which will make load times unacceptably slow. A full analysis of the documents in SharePoint to find broken links and dependencies will create a plan to resolve these issues.
In the case of performance issues caused by missing files, simply adding more resource to the SharePoint farm will not solve the problem. In some cases, the additional resource is simply expended on the same processes as before. In essence, SharePoint has more resource to try and find a file that does not exist, and continues to use it.
Running extensive diagnostics and reviewing service logs for SharePoint allows our Support Engineers to to identify the missing files that are breaking SharePoint for you. Once the issues have been properly established, steps can be taken to repair them either by recovering the missing files to address the indexing issues, or alternatively reviewing the underlying code to remove the references to the missing files and repair SharePoint’s functionality. The correct method will depend greatly on the type of issue being experienced and the nature of the missing file.
Next Steps
If your business is struggling with SharePoint performance issues, and your internal team are unable to diagnose or repair the problems, then speaking to a member of our team will benefit you. We provide initial consultancy and perform preliminary scans of your environment to assess the cause of the slow speeds and then work with you to put in place a fix.
We have extensive experience in solving common SharePoint issues and provide a health check service that analyses your SharePoint farm and file structure to diagnose and resolve problems.
Our approach to SharePoint technical support is ticket based – you simply pay for the number of hours required to fix the issue, rather than needing a long-term support contract. This is useful for clients who only have occasional issues with the software, and allows for more flexibility for your internal team to focus on your overall IT Strategy, rather than needing to spend time researching the possible causes of your SharePoint problems and then applying a fix – our experience means that we can normally fix things very quickly and get you back up and running efficiently
Call now on 0203 697 0302 to speak to a member of our team
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