Problem

Since LMS is not yet available, we are using the Groupfinder block to power our registrations for Northside U. We chose the Groupfinder block because it automatically hides groups that are at capacity. The Lava driving the Groupfinder view is all from a Persisted Dataset, so there are 0 database calls happening. When we launched Northside U last fall, it was loading in ms. However, today I noticed that the page was taking 8+ seconds to load. I then narrowed it down to the Groupfinder block, and finally even further to the Groups merge field. 

For each Group that gets added to the Groups merge field, there's a whole lot of information that gets added with it - including an array of Members. These courses for us are quite large - often have 100-200 people per group. So as the courses grow, it is more and more data being pulled into the Groupfinder block. 

As it stands, there's nothing I can do to make the page faster other than to ensure that groups that have come and gone are hidden so they aren't added to the Groups merge field.

Proposed Solution

I would love to see a block setting that essentially enabled a "lightweight" mode or "performance" mode or whatever you'd like to call it that, when checked, only added necessary merge fields to the Groups object. I would consider Name, Id, Description, and maybe Group Type, and Group Type Id necessary? It would speed up the block tremendously for us since all the data we need is in the Persisted Dataset.

This is on our production site, showing the benchmark stating zero database calls and a high load time:

This is on our development server, and shows each group in the Groups object and the number of members in the Members Array. This Lava is still 0 database calls.