Emmanuel Katto Dubai : Request for Feedback on 403 Forbidden Errors & Support Delays

Hey everyone,
I’m Emmanuel Katto Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), I’ve encountered an issue where one of my apps is completely down, and the console is showing 403 Forbidden errors. The API calls also return the same error. What makes it worse is that support hours are inadequate, and we’re still hours away from getting help. The last time this happened, it took a long time to resolve, and the response from support was less than helpful—something along the lines of:

“As for the forbidden errors, sadly due to the nature of this error and what our logs track, it makes it challenging to determine the root cause.”

I wanted to check in with the group to see if anyone else is experiencing this, and to brainstorm potential solutions or workarounds.

Here are a few specific questions I’d love your input on:

403 Forbidden Errors:

Have you encountered 403 Forbidden errors in your apps before? What was the underlying cause, and how did you manage to resolve it?
Troubleshooting 403 Errors:

Any suggestions for debugging or troubleshooting these types of errors when they occur, especially when the logs aren’t clear?
Support Response Times:

Has anyone experienced similar delays in support response? How do you handle these situations when you need quick resolution but support is unavailable?
Error Resolution Process:

What steps or strategies do you follow when facing errors that aren’t immediately clear? Any tools or approaches that have helped you figure out the root cause faster?
Workarounds or Preventive Measures:

Is there anything I can do in advance to prevent this from happening again, or workarounds to keep the app running while waiting for support?
Service Reliability:

Has anyone experienced consistent issues with service uptime or access to certain features during off-hours? How do you manage your workflow when these issues arise?
Managing Downtime:

In cases where the app goes down unexpectedly, how do you typically handle user communication or manage downtime until it’s resolved?

Regards
Emmanuel Katto

Hi @emmanuelkatto24,

Thank you for reaching out, and I’m sorry to hear about the issues you’re experiencing with your app. We’ve looked for a support ticket under your email address but haven’t found one, so we apologize for any miscommunication on our end.

We understand how frustrating it can be to face downtime, especially when quick resolutions are needed, and we’re here to help. To ensure you’re connected to the right support, please send me a private message here in the forum with any additional email addresses or account details we might use to locate previous communications. This will help us address any concerns you have and get you the support you need.

For future communications, here is our direct support ticket form: Create Support Ticket

We appreciate your patience, and again, we’re very sorry for the inconvenience as that is not the experience we want any of our customers to have. Looking forward to helping you further!

Our app is down as well - 403 error on certain resources.
Knack builder works fine, but the application is failing to load and just draws a blank page.
Status page on the website suggests there are no system outages.
I have submitted a support ticket.

Hi @kris,

Thank you for sharing. In case you happen to use the KTL library, we have received reports from customers using the library that are experiencing similar issues. It appears there is a hotfix that’s in process on their end:

I think you may be right that it was related to KTL. I removed their code from the app and it worked. I’ll have to reconsider using third party tools if they can break the app like this.

I am still getting console errors (regardless of KTL) for this resource:
https://cdn1.cloud-database.co/namespace/scripts/renderer_uid.js.map

*uid = big random string

Any idea what this is and why it 403’s twice for our apps?

Hmm… good question. :thinking:

It’s hard to say what’s causing that URL to appear in your console log without properly troubleshooting with your app. Please include that information when you reach our support team if you haven’t already and they will be happy to investigate that for you.

The appearance of a URL like https://cdn1.cloud-database.co/namespace/scripts/renderer_uid.js.map in the console log typically indicates that the app is trying to load a source map file for debugging purposes but cannot find it.

Hi Les, I had raised it with support (including the whole url) but they just ignored that part of my ticket completely.

Thank you for letting me know. I’ll request for the team to respond to you on that issue. I apologize for the oversight.

For the 403 we got the same response: “As for the forbidden errors, sadly due to the nature of this error and what our logs track, it makes it challenging to determine the root cause.”
It seems to be caused from too many API calls in a short period of time. There is nothing that can be done other than wait. What I have done is reworked everything to ensure there API calls are spread out. It means the app is slower to update but it means better uptime.

This isn’t the only problem with support though sadly. Right now the status page indicates the task scheduling issue is resolved but it’s not, I asked that the status page reflects this and they said they would pass on the feedback