Documentation/ Working with documents/ The activity bar
The activity bar
Operations that take a while do not lock the application: they run in the background and their progress shows in a bar across the top. While it is there, something is happening.
On this page
What it is telling you
The bar says there is an operation running against the server. It is not an error and it is not telling you to wait: it is a statement of what is going on.
It answers the commonest question during a long operation: whether the action actually started or never got going at all.
What brings it up
| Operation | How long it usually takes |
|---|---|
| Processing uploaded documents | Under three seconds a page |
| Sending to the ERP | Depends on the destination and how many documents |
| Building reports and exports | In proportion to how much you are exporting |
| Batch operations | In proportion to how many documents |
| Querying long lists | Brief |
What you can do meanwhile
The operation carries on even if you change screen. You can go to another list, open a document or look at something else while it finishes.
What you should not do is close the browser tab during a file upload: unpacking a ZIP and sending the files happen in the browser itself, and closing it cuts the upload off.
Why not to repeat the action
Repeating an operation that is running can double its effect. Pressing send again while the send is under way can send twice; repeating an upload creates duplicate documents, which cost you allowance and have to be cleaned up afterwards.
If you are unsure whether an action went through, the right check is to refresh the list and look at the documents' statuses, not to do it again.
When it finishes
The bar disappears and the application shows the outcome: a confirmation, a partial-result notice or an error. On batch operations the outcome says how many went through and how many did not.
The list refreshes to match what is really there, including when the operation failed.
If it takes longer than you expected
- Wait for the bar to go. The time is proportional to the volume: sending two hundred documents does not take as long as sending five.
- Refresh the list and look at the statuses of the documents concerned before deciding it failed.
- Check your connection: an operation can be cut off by the network dropping, in which case you get a connection error.
- Do not repeat the operation until you have checked where things stand.