SAP SuccessFactors WorkZone Page Load Times

[JohnRTx]

We are in the process of implementing SAP SuccessFactors WorkZone to replace our portal. We are using it as the central hub for our users to access services and applications from SuccessFactors and our on-premise SAP ERP system using the Cloud Connector. We are finding, however, that the page load times are relatively lengthy. The home page is taking 6 to 7 seconds to load and when opening applications we are seeing a slow load time. Fiori apps and SF tiles do a bit better. Has anyone had success or figured out any tricks to getting the page load times and responsiveness to increase? 

[arsalali]

I can confirm this issue. We are also currently setting up WorkZone SuccessFactors edition and the load times vary between 10 to 15 seconds.
Upon a closer inspection a render manager takes a lot of time. It seems that something is blocking it from displaying the UI earlier.

[Sebastian_W]

Hi @JohnRTx, 

are you still struggling with the performance or could you solve this in the meantime?
We are also facing the same issues.

Best Regards,
Sebastian

[JohnRTx]

Hi @Sebastian_W,

We go live with our WZ site in a week and like @arsalali pointed out, we saw the biggest lag time with the one render manager call. We've had a ticket open for the last couple of months and have been working with SAP to try to improve performance. They did make one update to the servers a couple of months ago that helped a little but, without caching, we still see 10 seconds or more to load. We have also been told that, for a non-cached version of the site, 10 seconds is about the expectation. Once cached, we do see improvements and pages take under 5 seconds usually. Wish I had better info to share, and I hope SAP continues to make improvements.

Regards,

John

[Sebastian_W]

Thank you, John for getting back to me! We are keeping the fingers crossed...

[Sebastian_W]

Thank you, John for getting back to me! We are keeping the fingers crossed... If we get any news from SAP, I will update you here

[arsalali]

Finally, were able to resolve the issue with the of SAP a few months ago. 
I figured to let everyone know what the exact problem was:
Together with the customer, we introduced a very extensive navigation toolbar which referenced several workspaces.
The essential part here is: Not by URL, but by the inbuilt functionality to reference a workspace in the navigation bar. 

It seemed to be a good idea since it  was setup quite fast and easily. But there is a catch:

The more workspaces you have referenced with this method, the more time the initial loading time will suffer.
A hard reload also brings no improvement because of whats of the following:

When using the inbuilt functionality to reference a workspace in the toolbar, before it is going to be displayed, a permission check is going to be perfomed - for each workspace separately. 
In our case, we had referenced more than 50 work spaces and work pages. So each time an employee and even we opened WorkZone, it would check which areas we are allowed to visit, increasing the loading times drastically. 

The solution: Replace any occurence of workspace references with their direct URL in the navigation bar.. The loading times went down to a fraction of what we had before.
In case someone is not authorized to view a certain workspace, he will get a message saying so, once he is on the page.