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DataLaVista™

Troubleshooting

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This page lists the problems people run into most often, with the cause and the fix for each. It is for anyone whose dashboard, page, or file is not doing what they expect. Each entry starts with what you see.

A file on the web does not load

Cause: the website that hosts the file does not allow other sites to read it, or you do not have permission to read the file. DataLaVista tries to download the file directly first. If that fails, it asks whether it may use a relay service, and names the services it would use.

Fix: put the file in a document library on your own SharePoint site and connect to it there, which always works. If the file must stay where it is, check that you can open its address in a new browser tab, and ask the owner of the website to allow access from the site that hosts DataLaVista.

The SharePoint page stays blank

Cause: the page cannot find or run the DataLaVista script.

Fix: open the browser console with F12 and read the first error.

  • If it says the script could not be found, check that datalavista.js is in the scripts folder of the Site Assets library and that the page is directly in Site Pages, as the install guide describes.
  • If it says the script was blocked, ask your SharePoint administrator whether the tenant's content security policy allows scripts from the site's own Site Assets library.
  • If it says DataLaVista could not find the dlv-root element, the web part code was not pasted in full. Paste the whole contents of DataLaVista-sp.html.txt again.

"DataLaVista could not start because its built-in ... library did not load"

Cause: another script on the same page kept one of DataLaVista's built-in libraries from loading.

Fix: remove other code from the page's web parts and refresh the page. If the message appears again, ask your site administrator and mention the errors shown in the browser console.

The numbers do not match the source

Cause: almost always the query. A join that matches too many rows multiplies the numbers, a filter drops rows you expected, or a number came through as text and was not added up.

Fix: go back to the Query tab and compare the results preview with the source. Check the row count first. Then check that the fields you add up are numbers. The Build a query guide lists the checks to make.

Cause: the link points at the report configuration file itself instead of at the DataLaVista page with the file's address in its report part.

Fix: use the link that Publish to SharePoint shows, or copy it with Share. To make report files open from a document library, apply the formatting files described in Publish and share a dashboard.

A shared dashboard shows no data for someone else

Cause: that person can open the DataLaVista page but cannot read one of the data sources, such as a SharePoint list or a file in a library.

Fix: give them read access to the data source, or share a dashboard built from data they can read. DataLaVista adds no permissions of its own, so SharePoint's permissions decide what each person sees.

The dashboard is slow

Cause: the viewer's browser is doing all the work, and the query returns more data than the dashboard needs.

Fix: on the Query tab, remove unneeded fields and filter unneeded rows. Keep the number of widgets reasonable, and preview after each change.

An older version keeps showing after an update

Cause: the browser kept a copy of the old datalavista.js.

Fix: press Ctrl+F5 on the page, or clear the browser's saved files for the site, and open the page again.

Conclusion

Most problems come from the data source or the query, and the fix is on the Query tab or in SharePoint permissions. If a problem is not listed here, report it on the issue tracker on GitHub with the steps that lead to it and the message in the browser console.

Additional resources

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