Increase Web Interface timeout

Question

What is the correct way to increase the timeout for web user interfaces?

Comments

Hello,

What do you mean by 'timeout'? Can you explain in more detail?

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Logging into the web interface, how long is the default before your session expires and you have to log in again? We don't use the passthrough authentication.

Answer 1

Hello,

By default, a user stays logged in to the Web Interface during 120 minutes. To configure the time limit:

1. Make sure that the Web Interface Customization tool is closed.

2. Open the Web.config file for the necessary Web Interface in a text editor. By default, Adaxes Web Interface sites are installed in the following folders:
   Administrators: C:\Program Files\Softerra\Adaxes 3\Web Interface\Admin\
   Help Desk: C:\Program Files\Softerra\Adaxes 3\Web Interface\HelpDesk\
   Self-Service: C:\Program Files\Softerra\Adaxes 3\Web Interface\SelfService\

3. Find the following lines in the file:

    <authentication mode="Forms">
      <!-- 
        Warning: The protection must be 'All' because a ticket that is stored in 
        the cookie conains user password in case if the user provides credentials explicitly.
      -->
      <forms protection="All" cookieless="AutoDetect" loginUrl="~/SignIn.aspx" timeout="120" />
    </authentication>
   

4. The time (in minutes) during which a user says logged in to the Web Interface is determined by the timeout attribute of the forms XML element. For example, if you want a user to be logged in to a web interface for 3 hours, modify the ​forms​ element as follows:

      <forms protection="All" cookieless="AutoDetect" loginUrl="~/SignIn.aspx" timeout="180" />
   

5. Save the file.

6. Repeat the same for the other Web Interface types, if necessary.

Comments

Thanks - one question I keep getting is that users tell me that they can be in the middle of doing something in ADaxes, and if this timeout runs out, they are logged out right then, interrupting what they were working on.

Is this an absolute time, or does it watch for user activity?

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The time when a user's authentication ticket expires is reset after each request to the server. So, if you've set 180 minutes, for example, then a user will have 180 minutes to make another request to the server before they get logged off.

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Thanks for the feedback. I passed along the expected behavior to our ADAxes user community and they all responded that the timeout does not appear to be working this way on the 2013.2 release.

What they are experiencing is that they can be using it all morning, make a change and then 5 minutes later when they start to take the next action they are required to log in again.

On the previous version of the product this was not the case.

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Hello,

Can you send a copy of your Adaxes Event Log from the computer where the Web interface is installed to our support e-mail (support[at]adaxes.com)? For information on how to access the log, see the following help article: http://www.adaxes.com/help/?ServiceAdmi ... ntLog.html.

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Hello,

We managed to reproduce the issue. It looks like the timeout is not sliding, that is, the time count starts when a user signs in and is not reset on each operation. We'll fix the issue in the next version to be available by the end of the month. For now, try setting the timeout to a larger value per the instructions in Increase Web Interface timeout.