Workfront nonresponse download issue

[SheldonGr]

Hi all, 

Curious if this is a deeper internal IT issue or a Workfront issue. We have 15- 20 people on our team who use Workfront on various machines and browsers (mac, windows, Chrome, Safari). Late last year/early this year it started to where we will be in Workfront using it as normal and then all of a sudden when we click something, nothing will happen and a 1KB file download with no content will happen instead. There is no "common thread" to what we're doing in WF when it happens, sometimes we're opening proofs or proofing workflow, sometimes we're navigating to tasks, sometimes to our home screen. The only thing that seems to fix it is clearing cache and history and then closing the browser and reopening. Sometimes going to another tab with WF open it will work fine, other times it won't. We have done some trouble-shooting with our internal IT and they think it's a WF issue, so before opening a ticket I wanted to see if this happens to anyone else and if there's a known fix.

Thanks in advance! 

[RandyRoberts]

That particular thing has never happened to me but if doesn't happen on any other websites but Workfront, it's probably Workfront. I can tell you something like that is gonna be pretty hard to diagnose though.

[KatherineLa]

This would be insanely obscure, but I do know that when a browser tries to download a file and finds it corrupt/unreadable then it will often download simply as a 1kb file. Does your instance have custom branding, or use any sort of custom icons/images for navigating in things like reports/dashboards that might be harder to reach during load periods? It almost sounds like the UI is trying to render an image as part of navigation but intermittently can't access the images in a timely fashion. Or it's unable to completely download everything to wherever it's temporarily caching all the info to render the page - disk space issues? 

[SheldonGr]

This seems like the closest we've gotten to a diagnosis. I'm wondering if it could be years of older projects/proofs/images in our Workfront, could that be the cause?

[RandyRoberts]

In order to diagnose that, you would have to see what's on one of the pages where the behavior occurs. As Katherine suggested above, Are there custom branding logos or icons on those pages? Do you have anything that might block built-in icons or images? Maybe a browser plugin? an ad blocker? firewall?

I would start by disabling all browser plugins, flush the cache and hard reload (if Chrome). If you can get it to occur repeatedly, you could use the browser dev tools to trace what's happening. The other question is "Is this happening with any other websites?"

[SheldonGr]

It's happened on several different pages in Workfront. It apparently happened to a coworker on a different site 1 time out of the 200 or so times it's occurred, but the vast majority of times it's Workfront. We use the default Workfront branding.

[KatherineLa]

I'm not sure on that part, mainly because you say the behavior is occurring at many points in the UI. That suggests something that all those UI screens must have in common. The only thing that comes to mind would be your Branding configuration images, whether at the instance level or at a layout-template level. If you're using that rotating custom background with multiple images functionality, I'd be suspecting that too. Might be it can't load the new image fast enough, or one of them got deleted somehow.

If it were my instance, I'd get completely new copies of whatever images were being used and replace them. I'd pick a handful of users that were experiencing the quirk and ask them all to reset cache/cookies and then monitor for me for awhile. 

I'd also get ahold of a copy of one of those tiny files and open it to see if there's any clue in the file itself. 

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/workfront/using/administration-and-setup/customize/custom...

[SheldonGr]

We use the default Workfront branding. As far as the file goes, it asks what program to open it with, properties look like this:

 

[RandyRoberts]

That's puzzling. Can you open the file in a text editor and see what's inside?

[SheldonGr]

Attached here. Nothing useful as far as I can tell.

 

[Sujatha_TS]

hi, This happened to us few times as we use DAM integration. here is the support solution we had - ensure the file upload is not corrupted, files are uploaded fully - sharing file link before its completely uploaded or refreshed page as its uploading can cause this issue.  

When downloading if you receive a message saying download as package or download single file, opt for downloading the file type you are looking for.