Author: Eric Vasbinder

Vista Remote Link (VRL) is a powerful technology that allows for the Vista rich client to be run locally on a user's local workstation. There are a number of significant advantages to this mode of operations. However, when the rich client is running thousands of miles away from the server, there may be a performance decrease when using VRL. This most frequently occurs with those operations that have high levels of data validations, such as PR Timecard Data Entry.

IMPORTANT

Viewpoint has added in support for two new datacenters to increase the performance of data entry for our Vista users: West US (Fresno, CA) and North Central US (Chicago, IL). IF YOU HAVE PERFORMED A LATENCY TEST AND YOUR RESULTS TO ONE OF OUR NEW SUPPORTED DATACENTERS IS BETTER THAN YOUR CURRENT DATACENTER LOCATION, PLEASE REACH OUT TO OUR CLOUD SUPPORT TEAMS TO DISCUSS A RELOCATION OF VISTA TO ANOTHER, CLOSER DATACENTER

Background

Some forms in Vista perform a large number of validations; validations require a sequence of back-and-forth data communications between the Vista client and the server. Unlike web browsers, rich clients often perform validations at the field level and the line level. As such, each one of these “round-trip” sessions adds time into process of getting data to appear in fields. When the round-trip is only a few milliseconds, like in a LAN environment or in RDP, 50-70 round trips is not a big deal; your server is literally only down the hallway. When the client is moved to thousands of miles away from the server, the network latency might increase to 60ms or more. This can often be up to 10 or 20x higher latency PER ROUND-TRIP. In that situation, each one of those round trips add up. This back and forth can cause problems with data entry performance in validation-heavy forms.

A great analogy is to imagine that Vista is a delivery truck. Imagine that the delivery truck has to make 50-70 deliveries back and forth between a retail store and the warehouse for each big item that is purchased. If the retail store and warehouse are just a half mile away, you can still finish rapidly, even if it is tedious work; the time it takes to go back and forth - the latency - is very low. However, now imagine that the warehouse moves one thousand miles away. Each round trip now takes much longer. All of a sudden, those 50-70 round-trip deliveries now add up real fast. There are multiple ways to increase performance in this scenario, from reducing the number of deliveries (making the delivery process more efficient) to keeping the warehouse as close as possible even if it does have to move (geographical proximity).

Given those possible ways to increase performance, Viewpoint continues to enhance the efficiency of Vista operations, to shrink the number of actions behind the scenes to enter data. In addition, see below for a number of other options, including ways to modernize and democratize workflows to take advantage of the distributed nature and efficiency of our web browser-based extensions to Vista, which perform all validations on the server-side, keeping the number of round-trips very small.

There are five areas where we see measurable data entry lag today:

1. PR Timecard entry (field to field, and line by line)

   1. FYI - We recommend using VP1 Field Management and HR Portal (HFF / Keystyle) instead of Vista for this

2. JB Progress Billing (field to field, and line by line)

   1. FYI - We recommend using VP1 HFF / Keystyle instead of Vista for this

3. AP Line Item Entry (field to field, and line by line)

   1. FYI - We recommend using VP1 Financial Controls (HFF / Keystyle) instead of Vista for this

4. AR Line Item Entry (field to field, and line by line)

5. PO Line Item Entry (field to field, and line by line)

   1. FYI - We recommend using VP1 HFF / Keystyle instead of Vista for this

As of Vista Version 2020R1, we have implemented our new Validation Service. Part of Speed Demon IV, the Validation Service uplifts some of the validation effort that is performed on the client and places it on the Vista app server, dramatically shrinking the impact of round-trips that need to be performed between the client and the server. In our preliminary testing, we have seen data entry performance improve by an order of magnitude. In many cases, this performance improvement is enough to allow for an acceptable end user experience.

However, some users of data entry forms in Vista are so rapid, and so capable of quickly entering information, that even this level of performance improvement is not sufficient. For them, manual data entry in Vista over VRL to our cloud could appear to be up to TWICE AS SLOW as on-premise LAN.

DATA ENTRY TO VISTA OVER VRL IN OUR CLOUD IS HIGHLY DEPENDENT ON LATENCY. ANY LATENCY TO YOUR VISTA CLOUD INSTALLATION THAT IS OVER 30ms WILL RESULT IN NOTICEABLE SLOWNESS. FOR OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE, THE LOWER THE LATENCY, THE BETTER - REMEMBER YOUR ON-PREMISE LATENCY WAS LIKELY ONLY 10ms OR LESS. PLEASE TEST YOUR LATENCY PRIOR TO GO-LIVE.

MODERNIZING WORKFLOWS

To enable your processes to be performed as efficiently as possible, we strongly recommend using modern tools to democratize your workflows, to allow for multiple users throughout your organization, from field staff to back office personnel to be empowered to enable activities such as time entry themselves.

The Options

Modernized Workflows (Highly Recommended)

Here are some options modernize your workflows:

• Use Viewpoint's HR Portal and/or Field Management (formerly Keystyle, a.k.a. HFF) for time card entry

  • As these solutions are web pages and/or native mobile apps, validations are not performed in the same way, so data entry is faster.

  • A key additional benefit of this solution is that the time-consuming effort (even when data entry is rapid) of entering multiple timecards for all employees at once is eliminated

    • Timecard entry is democratized, rather than being forced to occur through a small number of payroll clerks

• Use Viewpoint's Financial Controls AP Unapproved workflow for AP Line Item Entry and AP Approvals

  • As this solution is web-based, validations are not performed in the same way, so data entry is faster.

• Use Data Imports

  • Using a CSV file to import time through Vista's time import mechanisms will avoid the slowness in data entry entirely.

Workaround (If Needed)

• Use RDP

  • In this specific situation, you would partner with our cloud support team to request RDP connectivity be set up for the specific users who except sub-millisecond response times in the forms listed above.

  • With RDP, Viewpoint hosts the Vista rich client on our Terminal Servers in our cloud, placing the client right on top of the database server, very much like it is done on-premise, this reduces latency to less than 1ms, thus increasing speed by up to 20x.

  • NOTE: There are functional down-sides with using RDP, including no drag and drop from local workstations, more difficult printing and scanning, etc.

  • NOTE: these users, if they use Microsoft Office integrated with Vista, would need to purchase Microsoft Office E3 licenses or higher for Microsoft Office to be hosted in our cloud.

Continued Vista Efficiency Improvements

Viewpoint will be continuing to invest in data entry performance in various areas in Vista. We have several options under review to continue these improvements, but we cannot commit to any time frames due to being a publicly traded company.

In addition, for customers located in specific regions, Viewpoint can spin up additional regions in Azure to geo-locate your data closer to you, saving up to 30ms in round-trip time for data entry. This can improve data entry speed measurably. One example is adding an additional region for the Southwest US region, allowing customers in locations such as California, Arizona, Nevada, etc. to connect to a datacenter located in Fresno, WEST US, instead of Tri-Cities area, Washington State.

Please use the link above to vote for this new Azure region to be supported.