Sandbox is not available alongside to academy course

I am doing modelling fundamentals course and sandbox has stop appearing alongside the exercise page. I can login to Sandbox separately to de exercises but 'check database' does not pick those.
What is the problem?

Please choose proper Desktop version that is compatible and unblock popup blockers.
Thanking you
Sameer Sudhir Gijare

Hello @nzorin and welcome to the Community!

The sandbox for the course may have expired and should be automatically recreated. Sometimes it takes a minute or so for you to see the sandbox for the course.

Were you able to eventually see the sandbox?

These new GraphAcademy courses do no use Desktop. All work is done in the sandbox in the cloud.

Elaine

@elaine_rosenber - same problem with me. I can log in to sandbox and check results via *.neo4jsandbox.com. However, it cannot be toggled via the course page and it doesn't pick up changes I made via sandbox.!
Please refer to the picture in this reply - the sandbox area is always grey. It did ask me to log in, but it stays grey after I submitted my username and password. But I can confirm my sandbox hasn't expired as I can get access to it and check data I've created via *.neo4jsandbox.com.
Screenshot 2021-10-12 at 22.48.40|569x500

Any solutions?

@chenfrey920417, Welcome to the Community!

There is a connection between a particular sandbox and the courses.

The Cypher Fundamentals course uses the Movie sandbox and the Graph Data Modeling course uses the blank sandbox.

If these sandboxes do not exist, the GraphAcademy app will create them, even if you are continuing with a course for which the sandbox has expired.

Another thing that might be an issue is your Network speed?

I suggest that you log out of GraphAcademy, clear your browser cache and cookies and log back in again.

Let us know if you continue to have problems.

Elaine

Hi @elaine_rosenber - thanks for getting back to me. I tried this with no luck :frowning:
So, I unenrolled this course and reenrolled it again. Finally, I could get the sandbox sidebar open. It's a little inconvenient but I can resume coding in the exercise.
It would be nice if we have a permanent solution!

Glad to hear that you were able to resume the course.

Did you unenroll or log out?

Elaine

Hi @elaine_rosenber . I unenrolled the course which means I had to restart the whole process.

@chenfrey920417

You should not have to delete your account with GraphAcademy to resolve this.

Worst case scenario is that you go to your Account in GraphAcademy where you will see the sandbox(ex) started for your enrolled courses.

You can then navigate to the sandbox site and terminate them.

When you sign out of Graph Academy and continue to the course, it should re-create the sandbox for you.

Elaine

Hi Elaine,

I am having the same issues with the sandbox pane in the graph academy courses. I have followed all of your recommendations: allowed pop-ups, logged out and cleared history/cache, terminated sandbox and started a new one (about 10 times already). It connected for long enough for me to get 2/3rds of the way through the Graph Data Modeling Fundamentals course, but once I got to the Adding Language Data challenge it just stopped connecting and I cannot do anything to get it to reconnect. I have tried all the previous recommendations in chrome, firefox, and microsoft edge.

Hello @algonzalez2122 and welcome to the Neo4j Community!

That is very strange indeed. Did you clear all cookies also?

There is an icon at the bottom of the page to toggle the sandbox window (It looks like a castle icon). Did you try that?

The only other thing I can suggest is to use Developer Tools and see what is happening in your browser in the console.

Elaine

Hi all,

I'm getting the same issue ... I've completed all of the tasks using the desktop as I couldn't connect to the cloud version ... and I'm now in a position where I have successfully completed all of the coding tasks but as I cannot "Check Database", I cannot complete the course. Not got to the bottom of why it isn't connecting.

When I try to connect, I get "Server is taking a long time to respond...", shortly followed by " ServiceUnavailable: Failed to establish connection in 30000ms"

Andy

Hello @andy.davis,

Welcome to the Neo4j Community!

Completing the tasks of the Challenges in your own local copy of the graph will not work towards marking them as completed in GraphAcademy. You must use the embedded sandbox.

My guess is that there is an ad blocker/vpn/firewall that is preventing the embedded sandbox from materializing in your UI. I suggest that you sign out of GraphAcademy, clear all browser caches and cookies, open a new Web browser window and sign in to the course again.

If the sandbox does not exist, it will recreate it. Note that it takes 20 seconds or so for the $neo4j prompt to appear in the embedded sandbox. That means that you have a sandbox and are connected to it in the embedded window of GraphAcademy.

We are working on a solution to make the latency smaller for connections to the embedded sandbox.

If you are not getting the embedded sandbox after say 30 seconds, I suggest that. you open a Developer console to see what is blocking the UI.

Elaine

Hi All,

I started having the same problem 'sandbox no longer appearing' or not being recreated in the middle of the cypher course. Is there a fix?
Tried in different browsers, logged off and back in etc. Didn't help...

Thanks
-Ozgur

Hello @343544 ,

There is definitely a latency issue that we are looking into. When a Challenge/Quiz opens that needs the embedded sandbox, it sometimes takes about 20 seconds before you see the $neo4j prompt.

There is also a toggle sandbox icon in the lower right-hand corner of the page.

Getting the server connect error is probably related to some stale credential information stored in your browser cache/cookies. Typically clearing your Browser cache/cookies will enable you to again access the sandbox for the course.

Let us know if you are still seeing the issue.

Elaine

Thanks for your response.
No, this is not neither...

I wait for minutes, sandbox doesn't come up.

Cleaning browser cookies vs doesn't fix this. I tried in two other browsers too.
Please try to recreate this on your end to fix.
I can provide access to my account too if you would like to have a look.
Based on similar reported issues above it seems this is effecting everyone.

Does opening the Developer tools --> Console provide any information about the issue?

Elaine

No unfortunately not.
The dev console is pretty dormant with no visible error messages in server responses.

-Ozgur

@343544 Could you send me a quick screen recording of the problem you are facing? adam at neo4j(dot) com

From the screenshot in your first post, the username should be neo4j rather than whatever you have obscured.

thanks for getting back to me.
My sandbox timed out and the new sandbox is going well for now.
I also suspect it might have been the company VPN connection, but cannot tell for sure as don't see the problem with the new sandbox.