Print service very slow with custom layouts

[BrandonNelson1]

I am writing a webapp for my organization that needs to support printing through our local ArcGIS Server 10.1 instance.  As long as I publish the service with Layout Templates Folder blank (to use the default templates) I have no problems, but if I give it the folder with our branded layout templates, the only "layout" I can use is MAP_ONLY – everything else times out, and no error is logged in the server.  I've tried this using both the Print widget and PrintTask, with no success.

Edit:  With Kelly Hutchins‌' help, I discovered that the print was eventually successful, but took too long to be recognized by the JS API.  Is there anything I can check/change with our template documents to bring the processing time down to reasonable levels?

[GabiVoicu]

Thank you Brandon -that was helpful !

[TanuHoque]

i see the following error message coming back from your printing service.

"Unable to connect to map server at http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Topo_Map/MapServer"

is some kind of firewall or internal network changes happened since Friday last week that makes your printing service not to access map service from arcgisonline?

one simple way to check is to log on to your server machine as 'ArcGIS Server Account' user and try to access the above link using your browser.

[GabiVoicu]

You guys are fantastic - thank you so very much !

I'm checking right now permissions - it may very well be that - since I did just like you have suggested to connect to my server as my ArcGIS Server account and try to access the topo world map from there - sure enough access is being blocked ! We're trying right now to allow access and we'll know shortly if that was the problem !

[TanuHoque · Accepted solution]

I tried the JSON posted by Kelly with my printing service and my templates. I got the output in couple of secs.

Brandon, do you have any layers in your template mxd? Did you try recreating the template from scratch?

can you share your template with me? i can take a look.

Thanks.

[BrandonNelson1]

Yes, it's derived from the templates we use for print maps, so it contained a dozen or so layers to start with.  I removed the layers and it now works great.  Thank you!