Temp Unavailable Error in CustCare When Viewing Attachments

Incident Report for DentalXChange Product

Postmortem

CustCare Attachment Viewing Disruption - Database Connection Capacity Issue

Summary

On July 8, 2026, DentalXChange identified an issue affecting CustCare attachment viewing for multiple payers, who reported “Temporarily Unavailable” errors when attempting to view attachments in the CustCare portal. The issue was identified and resolved the same day.

We understand the impact this disruption had on your operations and are committed to transparency in our response. The corrective actions described in this document address both the underlying capacity limit and the monitoring gap that allowed this condition to persist without a clear path to permanent resolution.

What happened

Subsequent review found that this incident reflected an underlying, intermittent condition that had been present in the supporting application since May 20, 2026. The condition traces to a database connection capacity limit for that application that is periodically reached during periods of high transaction volume, producing temporary errors until traffic decreases or the affected server is restarted. This is a capacity issue, not a data integrity issue, and there is no indication of a software defect causing connections to leak.

The July 8 incident was resolved within 46 minutes, and CustCare attachment viewing was confirmed to be functioning normally. This was a service-availability event; our investigation found no indication that any protected health information (PHI) was accessed, exposed, or improperly disclosed.

Root cause

Clients experienced errors viewing attachments in CustCare because the application supporting attachment viewing could not obtain a database connection during a period of high transaction volume. When the application reaches its connection limit, new requests, including attachment views, receive a temporary error until volume drops or the affected server restarts.

The connection limit is a fixed cap on how many simultaneous database connections the application can hold. We found no connection leak. The cap was reached under normal, growing usage: transaction volume had increased over time, and the number of connections needed to serve it eventually reached a limit set years earlier. That limit had not been revisited since it was set, so it no longer matched the volume it needed to support.

The limit went unrevised because no periodic review process existed to reassess database connection capacity against current transaction volume for this application. Capacity planning for this database tier had no assigned, recurring owner, so the limit was reassessed only when a specific incident forced the issue rather than on a regular schedule. This ownership gap is the systemic root cause of the July 8 incident. Action 4 in Section 7 assigns ownership and a recurring review cycle to close it.

This condition had been present intermittently since May 20, 2026, and the July 8 incident was one visible occurrence of it. A permanent fix, an increase to the application's database connection capacity, is in progress.

How we restored service

  1. Identified and resolved the July 8 reported errors the same day.
  2. Confirmed CustCare attachment viewing was functioning normally following resolution.
  3. Identified the database connection capacity limit as the underlying condition through follow-up investigation.
  4. Confirmed sufficient server capacity to support an increased connection limit for the affected application.

What we are doing to prevent recurrence

  • Increase the database connection limit for the affected application across all servers. Target completion: 7/25/2026
  • Add direct paging for database connection capacity alerts, supplementing existing notifications. Target completion: 7/31/2026
  • Validate monitoring alert thresholds related to this condition to confirm ongoing accuracy. Target completion: 7/31/2026
  • Establish a periodic review process for database connection capacity across production applications. Target completion: 8/15/2026

Questions

For questions about this incident or to request a technical briefing for your team, please contact your DentalXChange account representative or reach our support team through the usual channels.

Posted Jul 16, 2026 - 12:59 PDT

Resolved

This incident has been resolved.
Posted Jul 08, 2026 - 15:20 PDT

Monitoring

A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.
Posted Jul 08, 2026 - 10:09 PDT

Investigating

We are informing all clients that we are currently experiencing an issue with Attachments in CustCare. Our team is engaged and addressing the issue. Please note this is not a cybersecurity Incident.
Posted Jul 08, 2026 - 08:59 PDT
This incident affected: CustCare (CustCare /CustCare, CustCare /CHSupport, CustCare /DCIApprover).