Decoding What Went Wrong During Yesterday’s (Wednesday 26 May) Astrazeneca’s Vaccine Registration
Unsuccessful registrations were due to technical glitches reported but what went wrong?
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Social Media was buzzing Wednesday (26 May) when the latest round of #CucukMYAZ registrations began but was delayed due to technical errors.
Laman tempahan janji temu vaksin AstraZeneca masih sedang dikemas kini. Anda boleh mula membuat tempahan slot bermula 12.15 tengah hari. Segala kesulitan amat dikesali.
— Vaksin COVID-19 🇲🇾 (@JKJAVMY) May 26, 2021
Many were experiencing problems such as the “Register Now” button appearing and disappearing. Some applicants later received notifications telling them they had been blocked from the registration site www.vaksincovid.gov.my
When the site could finally be accessed around 12:20 pm, Razif Mohamed, an Interactive Media Specialist at a private University in the Klang Valley, was quick to share a screencap on his Facebook of the browser’s error console revealing issues on the site.
TRP spoke to Razif, who said the obvious issue for sure is the traffic load. He states the server couldn’t handle it but ultimately, it was also the user experience.
When users would select the button to choose the state they are in, there was no visual response. You are supposed to see the dates to pick from so people end up clicking many times and that will send more request to the server which burdens the traffic load even more.
Razif to TRP
Although the website showed Razif that there were plenty of slots available, almost all the slots were actually taken. Needless to say, the user experience frustrated him.
Why could some people see the green (available) slots while others couldn’t?
After doing a right-click and inspect on the browser, Razif saw error messages in the console where the return value suggested that it might be due to a fully booked slot – but we won’t know for sure. His guess is because of server congestion and the data that was needed to display or update the slots was not returned.
(Credit: Razif Mohamed)
They should have anticipated the traffic. After the first round, people are now more convinced after seeing friends have gotten it.
Razif to TRP
Never judge a website by its landing page
The website on the surface may look good, what goes on underneath not many people see…. until you right-click on the browser and inspect the page that is.
Razif goes on to note that no average desktop user is going to monitor the status bar loading as they are more likely focused on the button at hand.
While the server may be fast as browsing the site was no issue, it may have been because there was no response from the API server.
API acts as a tunnel for the data server to communicate and serve data to what is being requested by the webserver/website. From an end-user’s perspective they see a button, click on it and they can see nothing happen.
What they don’t see is the code that shows an error in communicating with the API server. A few things can lead to this error such as a congested data/API server and therefore made it fail to respond.
After trying to load on several different browsers on his desktop, while his wife tried via mobile, neither could obtain a slot.
That’s not all the issues netizens found with the website
Sharp-eyed netizens noticed that the government website, which had a budget of RM70 million to build, was using a free version of Cloudflare, which could have possibly led to limitations.
I just waddled through some of the #CucukMYAZ website and stumbled into this. The API to get the list of PPVs is RATE LIMITED. CAN YOU NOT USE THE FREE VERSION OF CLOUDFLARE YOU NUMBNUTS! pic.twitter.com/JuR8xShKOa
— dJcybersonique (@dJcybersonique) May 26, 2021
However, others claim that the reason why the website experience was so bad was due to the high volume of traffic, not the free plan limitations.
Error 1025 is rate limiting because of plan limitations. Error 1200 is rate limiting because there are still too many requests pending from the origin server. In this case it’s because the origin server is too overloaded, not because of plan limitations.
— Paul Tan (@paultantk) May 26, 2021
While we could endlessly scrutinise what went on behind the site, there are two main issues to highlight here in terms of the website’s functionality.
Or TLDR;
1) Failure to accommodate high traffic;
2) Poor user experience.
Let’s hope it’s all fixed by the time the next wave of registrations come along.
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