"Service unavailable" error page

A stark page reading "This service is unavailable", with no WorkZerk logo, no navigation and none of our wording on it. It looks alarming and it is almost always the least alarming thing it could be: the app mid-update.

What it is

It is the hosting platform's own page, not ours, which is why it looks nothing like the rest of the app. You see it when a request arrives in the few seconds during a release where the new version has not quite taken over from the old one.

Usually about twenty seconds, often less. Wait, reload, and you are on the new version.

If it is still there more than a minute after you first saw it, that is not the normal pattern and it is worth telling us.

Nothing is lost

• Your data is not touched by a release. Portals, contacts, requests, documents and terms all live in a database that does not restart with the app.
• Links keep working. The links people are holding do not change, and their tokens survive. Somebody who reloads their portal during that window sees the same message and then the same portal.
• Unsaved typing is the exception. Anything you had typed but not saved is not preserved. If you press Save inside that window, the save may bounce. Reload and save it again.

The other pages that look like an outage

Too many requests (error 429). Each signed-in person has a limit on how many requests a minute they can make, generous enough that ordinary work never reaches it. Hitting it usually means a stuck tab reloading in a loop or a lot of tabs open at once. Close the extra tabs, wait a minute, carry on. Each person's portal link has its own separate limit, so one person refreshing hard does not lock out anyone else.

"Something went wrong on our end." A WorkZerk page with a Request ID at the bottom. That is a fault in the app rather than a release, and it has been logged. Try again once. If it happens again, open a ticket and include the Request ID, which lets us find the exact error.

A page that will not load at all, on every browser and device. That is worth reporting rather than waiting out. The status page is the fastest way to tell whether it is us, and it is deliberately hosted somewhere else so it stays up when the app does not.

What to do

1. Wait fifteen seconds and reload. That is the whole procedure for the normal case.
2. Still there after a minute? Check the status page.
3. Status page clear and it is only you? Try a private window, then a different browser. See supported browsers and devices.

If somebody you onboard reports it

They see exactly the same page, from the same cause, and it clears the same way. Tell them to wait a moment and reload. Their link is fine, their submissions are saved, and nothing needs reissuing.

That last part is worth being confident about, because the instinct is to revoke and re-send a link that looked broken. Do not. See resending and revoking a link for why that usually makes things worse.

Getting help

If a page stays down for more than a minute with a clear status page, open a help ticket with the URL you were on and a screenshot. The exact page matters: the hosting platform's message and a WorkZerk error page have very different causes, and the screenshot tells us which one you saw.