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Troubleshooting WAF Dashboard Access

Overview

This article covers what to do when the WAF dashboard will not load: you see a generic error page (“We’re sorry, but something went wrong”), a section of the dashboard is stuck loading, or you land on a setup screen you did not expect.

The cause is almost always one of three things, checked here from most to least common.

1. You Recently Added or Re-Added the WAF Add-on

If you removed the WAF add-on and added it back (or just provisioned it for the first time), the dashboard stays on an onboarding screen until your new SSL certificate is verified.

Re-adding the add-on always requires a new certificate, even for a domain that was set up before. Certificate verification happens through a CNAME record in your DNS:

  1. Open the WAF add-on from your Heroku dashboard.
  2. The setup screen shows a CNAME record with a Name/Host and a Value/Points To.
  3. Add that record at your DNS provider, exactly as shown. Check for stray leading or trailing spaces.
  4. If you use Cloudflare, set the record to “DNS Only”, not “Proxied”.

DNS propagation can take up to 24 hours, though it usually completes much faster. Once the record is verified, the certificate is issued and the full dashboard unlocks.

See Domain Verification CNAME for more detail on how verification works, and Troubleshooting WAF Provisioning if the certificate still is not issuing after the record verifies.

2. A Stale Login Session

The WAF dashboard authenticates through your platform login (Heroku single sign-on). A stale session can produce errors or a blank dashboard.

Log out of Heroku, log back in, and open the WAF add-on again from your app’s Resources tab.

3. A Temporary Platform Issue

If neither of the above applies, the error may be on our side: a deploy in progress or brief maintenance. These typically resolve quickly.

If you need to make an urgent change while the dashboard is unavailable (allowlisting an IP, clearing the cache, adjusting a rule), contact support and we will make the change on the backend for you.

Need Help?

If none of the above restores your dashboard access: