Symptom

When connected to a very large Windows Active Directory (AD), you might notice that AD users either take a long time to load into the BarTender or never load at all. Most commonly, Local users take a very long time to load in while Domain users don't load in at all.

This occurs when trying to add users through Administration Console > User Permissions > Add... or

Print Portal > Administrative Setup > Add User/Group.

Applicable to 

BarTender 2016 and later.

Administration Console or Print Portal.

Solution

This issue occurs because BarTender's query to your Active Directory times out due to the large number of users present.

Update BarTender

First, a fix was released for this issue in BarTender 2021 R7. If you are not already using this version or later, use this guide to update to the latest release of your version BarTender. Make sure you attempt this before continuing to the next solution.

Increase the value of the SendTimeout parameter

While the BarTender 2021 R7 fix increases the timeout for retrieving data from the Active Directory, you may need to increase this value further manually. If you still have an empty list when loading users, please do the following:

1. If open, close Administration Console and/or Print Portal.
2. In the installation directory (C:\Program Files\Seagull\BarTender 20xx), locate adminconsole.exe.config.
3. Open the file as an administrator in Notepad or a similar application.
4. Locate the following parameter:
   • <bindings>
           <netTcpBinding>
            <binding name="NetTcpBindingConfig"
     
5. Locate the SendTimeout parameter on the same line as <binding name="NetTcpBindingConfig".
   • SendTimeout – used to initialize the OperationTimeout, which governs the whole process of sending a message, including receiving a reply message for a request/reply service operation. This timeout also applies when sending reply messages from a callback contract method.
6. Increase the value of the SendTimeout parameter. The format is hours:minutes:seconds. Start with around 2-3 minutes and increase from there as needed.
7. Each time you change the value, restart the BarTender System Service and all its dependencies to apply these settings.

Additional resources

Overview of security in BarTender