Summary

This article discusses how to configure Parent Teacher Interviews (PTI) sessions to prevent performance issues and strain on the system. 

Resolution

Turning on all sessions with 2 minutes intervals for example can make the page unworkable for parents  due to the SQL and web rendering excessively large number of sessions for all years on the one page. 

To configure PTI for optimal performance it is best to "stagger" the sessions.

For example open the PTI for year 7 and 8 parents for a few days using 10 minute intervals - for a speedy parent experience.

Then stagger the next PTI sessions for Year 9 and 10s a few days later, and Year 11 and 12s.
 

Alternatively if it is not possible to stagger the PTI sessions then do not specify open times

 For example do not advertise "from 4pm tomorrow parents can log in and enter their PTI sessions".

This  causes too much load on the system from 4pm - instead the school could say "from tomorrow parents can log in" - this will spread the load over the day

Schools can configure the portal on their test/dev server first and tweak the sessions accordingly:

• Split the sessions by year level
• Increase the session times to 10 minutes or 15 minutes
• Turn off sessions if not needed
• Impersonate parents, via logging in to the portal as an admin, and see how the PTI renders based on above settings

Additional recommendations:

• The maximum recommended simultaneous connections for PTI is 100.
• Check and ensure that Database Pooling is enabled in Community Portal. The recommended maximum size is '100'. Instructions on how to configure is available here:https://help.synergetic.net.au/s/article/SynWeb-SQL-Connection-Pooling
• Check and ensure the Community Portal logins key is set to '100'. This will prevent additional users from connecting which will improve performance for the successul connections. This is set via the Synergetic Windows Application under the 'System' menu → 'Configuration File Maintenance' → 'Community Portal' 'Login' → 'MaxRecentLogins'
• Temporarily disabling Community Portal MyDetails may also improve performance during PTI sessions. MyDetails can be re-enabled afterwards.

Recent investigations have shown increasing both the Database Pooling and Community Portal Logins to '250' may benefit performance under load in some instances.