EDMONTON -- Social media users praised the work of an Edmonton man Wednesday who shared a workaround to a glitch with the province's online vaccine booking tool.

Kory Mathewson said he first learned of the glitch from his brother who was working to book an appointment for his grandparents.

"So he went onto the site, booked the grandmother into a vaccine time tomorrow and then started to try and book the grandfather in but ran into an error on the form," said Kory Mathewson.

Mathewson said the glitch was on the page asking for the applicant's postal code.

He said every time his brother would input it and press submit, nothing would happen.

"The form wouldn't submit but it also wouldn't give you any kind of error," he told CTV News Edmonton. "So I open up the developer tolls on my browser and I say, 'OK where in the process is this getting stuck? Like where's the quicksand?'"

Mathewson – who was born and raised in Edmonton – has a PhD in computing science and both his brothers are knowledgeable in the area.

He said they found "one link in the chain that was going real slow and would timeout."

"And I said, 'What happens if you just kind of remove that link and reconnect the chain? Can you sort of move past it?' And the answer is 'Yes,’" said Mathewson.

SHARING IS CARING

The 33-year-old and his brothers successfully booked their grandfather an appointment and – noticing others were having issues – decided to share their solution.

Mathewson posted directions to the fix on Twitter and received hundreds of likes and dozens of thank yous.

"I felt uplifted by the whole Twitter community that was able to like jump on board, make this happen," he said. "All the credit doesn't go to me, it goes to them and it goes to my older brother and my younger brother."

AHS ACKNOWLEDGES GLITCH

In an email sent to CTV News Edmonton, an AHS communications official said a "bottleneck" occurred Wednesday morning when an "unprecedented number of Albertans" tried to use the online booking tool.

He said that while some individuals successfully booked their appointment using the workaround posted to Twitter, "this is not a permanent solution."

Kerry Williamson said the booking tool continues to experience "extremely high volumes" and Alberta Health Services IT teams "are working to find a way to make the process as fast and efficient as possible for everyone."

The email thanked Albertans for their patience and encouraged those who experience issues to keep trying.