Hoping this is the correct space to post. I have also reached out via chat.
For the last 24 hours, parts of our document that do not load, or more specifically the formulas on those pages don’t calculate/populate. The formulas are simple, like identifying who the active user is, but have a devastating impact on our sheet since it’s all built around it (user specific filters, task generation, everything in a project management/CRM tool, etc.).
After an hour of the document open, those formula(s) still won’t calculate; it appears there is no attempt by the page (no calculating… in the upper right, nothing trying to connect with browser development tools.)
The pages were hidden in the background, but even when made visible, it won’t calculate unless we actively navigate to the page.
To clarify as well, it’s not the whole document that won’t load, just some parts.
Is anyone else seeing / experiencing this?
Has there been a fundamental change in how pages load? Or is this just a current bug/issue?
Is there a way to set the priority of what gets loaded somewhere?
Sounds weird! Here’s some relevant documentation on the matter: Coda Recalculation
Have you tried debugging calculations to see if there’s something soaking all the processing power?
I have this same issue. I had built a whole permissions set around formulas calculating in the background. Many of these are very complex formulas and I don’t want them exposed to the user. Codans, any idea what is going on?
@coda
The behavior has indeed changed. You now have to open the page with your formulas at least once before your ‘hidden’ formulas become active. This ruins a lot of UX.
Edit: I just made a small doc or support to illustrate our problem and it works as expected. Obviously, my other docs are not 2 page docs, but it seems strange that doc size would be the issue…
We also experienced this. Had to emergency refactor to use hidden tables instead of hidden named formulas across a big doc. Frustrating to not have a controlled upgrade path for our docs when they introduce such breaking changes. Or even a warning so we have time to refactor before they release.
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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.
Can you let me know how the hidden formula is being used in your doc? Is it (or any of its downstream calculations) being used in the current page?
The experiment has been disabled until we figure out the root cause.
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@Harry_Doan, thank you for the clarification, certainly excited about further process improvements.
For my document, the formula that didn’t load was to identify the active user and their corresponding dynamic preferences and details (email, slack name, if user only wish to see active tasks, how many days past today does user wish to see; to name a few). Many of the doc’s filters for tables, button actions, and downstream formulas are user specific and rely on that basic formula (and what it connects to) to provide inputs. The active user stays the same, but their selections are constantly changing.
Newer features like the search in table and Filter Bar (which is a cool new feature), can eliminate some of the reliance on the “hidden” formulas I have, but not all of them (at least that I haven’t figured out yet).
Our CODA usage is all internal as of now, but with hopes to eventually include engagement in some capacity with our clients/customers, we would certainly need “hidden” formulas to be able to run in some way. Reading from the others above that might be a more pressing need.
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@Daniel_Degheri Certainly! Our performance improvement shouldn’t have affected hidden formulas the way shown here. It was supposed to be smart to know when a hidden formula should be run and when it can be skipped. I think maybe there is a bug related to CurrentUser specifically; given everyone who has reported the issue has issue with it.
I’m still trying to find out the root cause and fix it. The experiment is disabled, and your doc should work as usual 
+1 on CurrentUser link.
I had previously working button that relied on Views filtered by CurrentUser that stopped working. I’ve been able to fix it by filtering the table directly in the action instead on relying on this prefiltered view.
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