Page Tree Loading Behavior

The WikiPakk page tree loads page information on demand instead of loading the whole hierarchy at once. This keeps the tree fast even on sites with thousands of pages.

This article explains what the loading symbols mean and how the tree behaves on very wide hierarchy levels.

What does the dotted arrow mean?

A dotted arrow with the tooltip Check for child pages means WikiPakk has not yet checked the entries below that page. The page might have sub-pages, or it might be a single page.

Click the dotted arrow to check. Then one of two things happens:

• the page has sub-pages: the tree expands and the symbol changes to the usual chevron
• the page has no sub-pages: the expand symbol disappears; the page is shown as a single entry

Older WikiPakk versions show a static circular arrow instead. Click it to check.

When does the symbol resolve on its own?

On hierarchy levels of typical size, WikiPakk checks in the background whether pages have sub-pages. The arrows usually resolve after a moment: pages with sub-pages get a solid chevron, and single pages lose the expand symbol.

Why does the symbol stay on large sites?

The background check is skipped when one level of the tree is very wide:

• more than 200 pages on the top level
• more than 150 pages on a level further down

On such a wide level, each unchecked page keeps its dotted arrow, and its entries load when you click it. When you expand a page with up to 200 child pages, WikiPakk checks all of them at once. With more child pages, each one stays unchecked until you click its arrow.

This is intentional. Checking hundreds of pages for sub-pages would send a large burst of requests to SharePoint on every page load. SharePoint throttles clients that send too many requests in a short time, and once throttling kicks in, all requests are slowed down, making the whole page sluggish. The limits protect against that.

The limits are built into WikiPakk and cannot be changed via configuration.

Recommendation

If the arrows get in the way, reduce the number of pages per hierarchy level to below the limits. The background check then runs again, and pages with sub-pages get their solid chevron automatically.

If your scenario needs such wide levels, send a short description of the use case to [email protected]. This helps to get the topic on the roadmap.

An arrow can also remain after a background request fails. Click it to try again. Reopening the panel or reloading the page also starts a fresh load. Clicking again does not help after a permission error. You need the required SharePoint access first.