Project not loading

In rare instances, a project may fail to load in Tracker. If this happens, it’s typically related to either a caching issue, stories being out of order or there may be too many stories trying to load at once. This article shall serve as a resource to help customers troubleshoot and correct these issues. We also recommend reaching out to our support team so we can help.

Caching issues

Though rare, project caching issues can prevent a project from loading properly. Please attempt to expire your project cache by following the steps below.

  1. Go to your browsers web address bar.
  2. Append /expire at the end of the project URL (e.g., https://www.pivotaltracker.com/n/projects/1234567/expire).
  3. Press Enter.
  4. The project will redirect to a black screen - this is expected.
  5. Reload the browser page again.
  6. If you’re still seeing the infinite loading spinner, please proceed to the next section.

Stories are out of order

It can happen that the order of a particular story (in relation to all other stories) within the client is out of sync with the database. Please email support@pivotaltracker.com and let us know that you’re project isn’t loading and you’re following the steps in this article. We can then reorder the stories within the project from our end, which will ensure all stories are in sync with the database.

The project contains too many stories to display at once

Tracker was designed for stories to move through the development workflow starting from the Icebox, then to the Backlog and eventually to the Done panel (after being accepted). The Done panel doesn’t have to render all of the stories contained within it upon loading the project, or at all unless you explicitly click to load those past/done iterations. However, the “active” panels (Icebox, Current & Backlog) are always loaded in the project by default.

With that in mind, if stories are collecting in the active panels faster than they are being accepted and moving into the Done panel, it’s possible for a user to reach Trackers story project load limitations (though it will take several thousand stories). Several factors affect this threshold such as story size, average number of comments, total size of all file attachments, etc., so there’s not a hard and fast limit for what Tracker can handle. However, in general we tend to see performance issues when active panels have around two to three thousand stories in a single panel. Projects that won’t load at all typically have five thousand or more stories in a given panel.

In these cases, unfortunately there’s not a fast or simple fix. We recommend to first reach out to our support team so we can assess the situation and determine if your project has too many stories to display at once. If we determine that’s the case, the only solution is to reduce the number of stories to a number that Tracker is capable of rendering. The most immediate solution will be to use the API to query the project for the most recently created story IDs, and then run a CURL command to remove those stories from the project.

Query the project for recently created Stories

More often than not, a process implemented by a project member is using the API to create stories at an unsustainable rate. E.g., someone has hooked up a bot to report errors/bugs into Tracker and it’s run away and filled up the Backlog with thousands of stories. We’d recommend pausing that process, and then use the API to query all story IDs created after a certain date (relevant API documentation).

CURL example:

curl -X GET -H "X-TrackerToken: $TOKEN" "https://www.pivotaltracker.com/services/v5/projects/$PROJECT_ID/stories?filter=created_since:-1d&fields=id,name"

Use the API to delete recently created stories

After getting a list of story IDs to delete, you can use the API to delete those stories from Tracker. You may need to repeat this process, (checking the project each time to see if it will load), until the total number of stories has been reduced to a level that Tracker is capable of handling (relevant API documentation).

CURL example:

curl -X DELETE -H "X-TrackerToken: $TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" "https://www.pivotaltracker.com/services/v5/projects/$PROJECT_ID/stories/$STORY_ID"

Email Tracker support

If you’re experiencing issues with your project loading, please don’t hesitate to email us, making sure to include the project URL, so we can help as quickly as possible.

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