Our cloud practice software is slow in the afternoon. Is that us or them?

Cloud practice software being slow at a predictable time of day is a useful symptom, because a genuine problem at the vendor would not politely restrict itself to your busy period.

Three things to try, in this order:

• Plug a computer into the network with a cable and compare. If the wired machine is fine and the wireless ones are slow, it is your Wi-Fi, not your internet and not the vendor. This one test eliminates most of the possibilities in two minutes.
• Run a speed test during the slow period, and look at the upload number. Everyone looks at download. Cloud software, imaging uploads and video calls all depend on upload, and many business internet plans give you very little of it. If upload is saturated at 2pm, that is your answer.
• Check what else is running. Imaging backing up to the cloud mid-afternoon, a backup job scheduled during the day, software updates downloading to twenty machines at once, or someone streaming in the break room. One large transfer can flatten a small connection.

If wired is also slow and upload is not saturated, then it is worth asking the vendor, and asking them with those results in hand gets a much better response than asking whether their system is slow.

The fixes, depending on which it turns out to be: more or better placed access points if it is Wi-Fi, which in a clinic is frequently about the building rather than the equipment, because concrete, lead lined radiology walls and metal kennels all absorb signal; a faster or different internet circuit if it is upload, and fiber is worth asking about even where you were told it was unavailable a couple of years ago; or scheduling and traffic prioritization if it is competing traffic, so that your practice software takes precedence over a backup job.

We will run this diagnosis properly rather than guessing, and if the answer genuinely is the vendor, we will help you make that case to them.