Application access page is not loading due to browser timeout

Summary

Application Access page will not load completely due to the browser timeout. Only a part of the page will get loaded but the essence of the page (group list associated with application access) will not get shown:

Environment

Jira 8.x instance

Diagnosis

The problem can occur in two different circumstances.

Application access provided through many groups

• There are many groups associated with specific application access, which means the application access is not granted through a single group (e.g. jira-software-users)

• Upon reproducing the problem, browser console log may show errors about missing elements / resources, for example:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Downloading resources: batch.js:368:113 Error: jira/admin/application/application-role-labels missing jira/admin/group-browser/group-label-lozenge batch.js:10:1973 l http://localhost:8080/jira/s/8e45e8ee5ca3be82801a3464e31fa005-CDN/-323yak/820007/1g19vdd/bf140c2d3cdc01ec4082b00f2f866a09/_/download/contextbatch/js/_super/batch.js?locale=en-US:10 u http://localhost:8080/jira/s/8e45e8ee5ca3be82801a3464e31fa005-CDN/-323yak/820007/1g19vdd/bf140c2d3cdc01ec4082b00f2f866a09/_/download/contextbatch/js/_super/batch.js?locale=en-US:10 l http://localhost:8080/jira/s/8e45e8ee5ca3be82801a3464e31fa005-CDN/-323yak/820007/1g19vdd/bf140c2d3cdc01ec4082b00f2f866a09/_/download/contextbatch/js/_super/batch.js?locale=en-US:10 u http://localhost:8080/jira/s/8e45e8ee5ca3be82801a3464e31fa005-CDN/-323yak/820007/1g19vdd/bf140c2d3cdc01ec4082b00f2f866a09/_/download/contextbatch/js/_super/batch.js?locale=en-US:10 l http://localhost:8080/jira/s/8e45e8ee5ca3be82801a3464e31fa005-CDN/-323yak/820007/1g19vdd/bf140c2d3cdc01ec4082b00f2f866a09/_/download/contextbatch/js/_super/batch.js?locale=en-US:10 u http://localhost:8080/jira/s/8e45e8ee5ca3be82801a3464e31fa005-CDN/-323yak/820007/1g19vdd/bf140c2d3cdc01ec4082b00f2f866a09/_/download/contextbatch/js/_super/batch.js?locale=en-US:10 l http://localhost:8080/jira/s/8e45e8ee5ca3be82801a3464e31fa005-CDN/-323yak/820007/1g19vdd/bf140c2d3cdc01ec4082b00f2f866a09/_/download/contextbatch/js/_super/batch.js?locale=en-US:10 s http://localhost:8080/jira/s/8e45e8ee5ca3be82801a3464e31fa005-CDN/-323yak/820007/1g19vdd/bf140c2d3cdc01ec4082b00f2f866a09/_/download/contextbatch/js/_super/batch.js?locale=en-US:10

Frontend problem due to a plugin

• Collected HAR file while reproducing the problem shows only several groups are fetched successfully, so the problem is not related to fetching the information from the backend:

  • Request

    https://<baseUR>/rest/internal/2/applicationrole/groups?_=xxxxxxxxxx was sent and received response 200 OK, groups were received:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 [     {         "name": "jira-servicedesk-users",         "labels": [             {                 "text": "Jira Service Management",                 "title": "Users added to this group will be given access to <strong>Jira Service Management</strong>",                 "type": "SINGLE"             }         ]     },     {         "name": "jira-administrators",         "labels": [             {                 "text": "Admin",                 "title": "Users added to this group will be given administrative access",                 "type": "ADMIN"             },             {                 "text": "Jira Service Management",                 "title": "Users added to this group will be given access to <strong>Jira Service Management</strong>",                 "type": "SINGLE"             }         ]     } ]

Cause

Cause 1

The cause for this issue is a browser timeout that happens due to long waiting time for the backend to query all the groups to be shown: loading each group will require a separate REST call to /rest/api/2/group endpoint, which can take a long time. Application access in Jira was not designed to support a setup where there are many separate Jira groups associated with a specific application access, but it was designed to have several main groups that will provide application access.

Cause 2

In case the groups are fetched from the backend, then a likely cause would be an installed plugin interfering with the page loading and rendering of the groups. One example of such plugin is Atlassian Hipchat Integration Plugin.

Workaround

Workaround for Cause 1

• Try and use a different browser to load the Application access page. For example, using Firefox proved to load the page for some users, but not in all cases.

• Use /api/2/applicationrole REST endpoint to:

  • Show groups associated with specific application access, for example

    1 2 http://<baseURL>/rest/api/2/applicationrole/jira-software http://<baseURL>/rest/api/2/applicationrole/jira-servicedesk

  • Add new groups with PUT method (documentation here) to associate application access to the new group, example:

    

    ⚠️Be very careful when using this endpoint, as the payload needs to contain all current groups plus the one that you want to add. Putting only the group you want to add in the payload will remove all other groups.

Solution

Solution for Cause 1

The way application access is granted needs to be reworked: it is better to reduce the application access to several basic groups as this was an intended way of granting the access to Jira applications.

Solution for Cause 2

Disable the problematic plugin and reach out to the plugin vendor to work on the solution, if a plugin functionality is required in Jira.