Canvas formula now only recalculates when I open the page in which it resides

Suggestion Box Bugs
1

I use the trick of user tables a lot:
Each of my docs has a users table (urUsers, in the below examples), with a bunch of columns representing user specific settings.
In that table’s page, I have a named formula:

CurrentUser = urUsers.Filter(CodaUser=User()).First()

I then reference CurrentUser formula everywhere in my doc for user specific filters, restrictions etc. This worked like a charm , until today.

Today, when I open any of these docs, the value of CurrentUser is a blank, thus breaking all my dependent formulas.
The only way to get it to calculate is to navigate to the page where it and the UrUsers table live, at which point it immediately calculates. For the most of my users, this is a hidden page, and so this trick is not a valid solution.

What gives ?

2

Hi @Nad , thanks for reaching out and sorry to hear you’re running into this issue. In order for us to test this, we will need access to your doc. You should be able to share by going to the Share in the top right-hand corner, clicking the button in the top right (to the left of the “X”), and toggling on Share with Coda Support (the gif below shows how to do this).

Afterward, please send us a link to that doc in your response so one of our Customer Champions can take a look for you!

3

I’m experiencing a very similar issue, mine is just not in a canvas.

I have not yet received a response from CODA support, but if you want to track my post, you can find it here as it might also solve your issue when we get a response.

4

Thank you for reporting the issue. We’re looking into the issue.

For the context, we were experimenting with performance improvement to reduce unnecessary calculations. It should still trigger calculations on a hidden formulas if it is used in the current page, but there is likely a bug in the logic that lead to this affecting your docs.

The experiment has been disabled until we figure out the root cause.

5

Hi @Harry_Doan, I am all for reducing unnecessary calculations so, while disabling this one fixed the issue, please don’t let this deter you from future experiments :slight_smile:

Thanks @Daniel_Degheri for linking to your thread, and apologies for unwittingly raising a duplicate. The issue we are experiencing is exactly the same - I just call a page a canvas for some reason.

@Shaina_Torgerson , thanks for the help but I’ll hold off pursuing this with the support team for now as the engineering team seems to be on the case.

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6

That is really good news - I do think there are many calculations that can be skipped. I have been wondering about this:

if(field1=“” , do nothing , do something)

I think that the do something is always evaluated, even if field1 is indeed blank. Performance would get a boost if you have big tables with this kind of logic.

Maybe I am mistaken on this assumption, but it feels like it works like that.

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