How to Report a Performance Issue in Benchling

Performance Issue Overview

Experiencing slow loading or timeouts in Benchling can be disruptive. A detailed report is essential to help our Support team quickly diagnose performance issues. This guide outlines the key pieces of information we need to troubleshoot your issue efficiently. 

Key Information to Collect

1. A detailed description of the issue: A clear description of the behavior is crucial for our team to correctly understand and diagnose the issue. Necessary pieces of information include:
   • What is the exact behavior you’re experiencing?
     • Be specific, and please provide specific links if applicable.
     • For example, "In entry X, registration table A takes 30 seconds to load," or "Saving this Notebook entry results in a timeout error."
   • Which tenant(s) are affected?
   • When did this start?
     • Please provide a timeline, including the date it began and whether it is still happening.
   •  Who is impacted?
     • Is it just you, your entire team, or everyone in the organization?
2. A performance profile and network log (HAR file). These files should be captured when the behavior occurs.
   • Instructions on how to collect a performance profile and network profile on Google Chrome can be found below.
   • Important: This file can contain sensitive data visible on your screen. Please only share it directly with Benchling Support.
3. A screen recording of the issue: This is the best way to show us the exact behavior you experience and better enables us to attempt to reproduce it on our end.
   • MacOS: Take screenshots or screen recordings on Mac
   • Windows: How to record your screen on Windows 11

Reporting the Issue

Once you have gathered the information above, please report the issue by following the steps listed below.

1. Create a new Support ticket by emailing support@benchling.com. 
2. Include your detailed description of the issue in the body of the email.
3. Attach the performance profile, network log (HAR file), your screen recording, and any other relevant files to the email.
   1. If any attachments are too large, please compress them into .zip files before sending.

A member of our Support team will confirm they have received the information and will keep you updated on the status of our investigation.

How to collect a Performance Profile and Network Profile

PLEASE NOTE: When recording a performance profile, we only require a ~15-30 second recording that captures the observed behavior. If the generated performance profile is too large to send via email, please compress the file into a .zip before attaching.

How to collect a Performance Profile:

1. Ensure the Benchling page where you are experiencing performance behavior is open in your web browser

2. Open Developer Tools via Chrome's options menu:  ⋮  > More Tools > Developer Tools. 

   

3. The Developer Tools interface will open within your browser. Click on the Performance tab.
4. Within the Performance panel, click the grey record button (    ) in the top left to start recording a profile.

5. Within Benchling, perform the actions that result in the unexpected behavior. A few seconds of recording is generally sufficient. (Note that all interactions will be slower due to the overhead of recording the profile.)
6. Click on the Stop button within the Performance Tab to stop the recording.

7. After a few moments, the profile will appear in the panel as graphical charts. Right-click anywhere and select Save profile… to your device.

8. To save the corresponding Network Profile, click on the Network tab of the Developer Tools interface.
9. Check the Preserve log box to ensure all network activity is captured, and click the download button on the top left to save the file.

Attach both the performance profile and network profile files in your ticket with Benchling Support. If you have not yet created a ticket, you can do so by emailing support@benchling.com, or by using the in-app Support chat.