The aim of this article is to help you understand in a more clear way what might be causing issues in your environment and how you can act to revert the scenario back to normal. We are always available to help you in this process!
Identifying the issue and eliminating variables
The first step in finding a solution is to clearly identify the issue, it might not always be clear what the issue actually is. However, most of the time you are dealing with an actual issue it most likely will be recurrent, or possibly other colleagues are facing the exact same scenario when performing the same actions. If other colleagues are not experiencing the same as you, it could be that the issue is linked only to your machine or browser. This phase of troubleshooting, should not yet include actions but only observation. Once you have a clear idea about the issue you can proceed to the next step.
Reproducing the issue
This step is not always possible, due to a number of reasons. But, if you can reproduce the scenario to try yielding the same result it can drastically help on the resolution. Performing this step not only allows for a much clear causation correlation but also allows for space to learn more details about the process itself. You might need help from your colleagues to reproduce the issue, this will also assist in understanding if the issue is local or not. Once you have reproduced the issue and fully identified it, you can move on to the final step.
Reproducing the same issue in a different browser can be very useful in pinpointing if the issue is related to the software itself or with some browser configuration.
Performing an action that matches your findings
Ctlr+Shift+R and Ctrl+F5
If menus or headers are not displayed correctly you might be facing issues with the Stylesheet. Whenever you use a website, the Stylesheet (aka CSS) gets downloaded from the server and stored locally on your computer, this helps your browser to load pages faster as well as memorize a few preferences, selected filters for example.
The CSS is responsible for the way that the information in the code gets presented to you, CSS is what creates dropdown menus and other visual aspects of a webpage.
When a CSS gets stored in your local browser, it's referred to as "Cached CSS" or simply as "Cache". Sometimes, when you access a page that your browser had already saved CSS information on but the page has been changed since then, you might experience a few bugs. That is because your browser is running the old stored information against the new code that you are presenting to it and for a number of reasons this code is not exactly the same as the one your browser stored in the past.
In a similar way to when we reset our mobile so it can work more efficiently with an OS update, we can also perform resets to our browser so it works more smoothly with a new code. We can do that by performing a hard refresh, this can be achieved by pressing Ctlr+Shift+R. This command resets your browser cache to that specific page, allowing you to run the most up-to-date version of that page, with all the updated CSS. A similar result can be achieved by pressing Ctrl+F5.
Clearing cookies
In case you are facing issues related to information not being displayed correctly on listing pages or on your Dashboard, clearing cookies will reset all stored preferences such as filters. This action should reset all stored personal preferences.
Clear site data
If you are facing any of the issues above and the previous actions have not yielded the desired result, as the last resource you can Clear site data. This can be done by:
- Go to your browser's menu
- Click on More Tools
- Click on Tools for Developers
- Find the Application tab
- Click on Clear Site Data