With the duty finder, I just had to sit in it for some time. The server for the duty finder has been having issues, and I presume that such are why it is so sluggish. When I did Satasha it showed me as the only person, and then all of a sudden I was in with a full group; the duty finder didn't update while it was finding people. I waited a good 20 minutes for it to do its thing before I got in.
You could shout for others and then join the DF as a partial group to try to speed things up.