forced log off due to inactivity (on-premise 6.12)-1530047296

If for example we have users that log in to docuware and minimize the web client to work elsewhere and forget to log off. Is it possible to force a log off due to inactivity or limit the time a user is logged on?

David,
This is not possible in any version of DocuWare at this time.

Phil Robson
Senior Director Support Americas

Hi David,

what is the purpose of your question? Why would your users want to be logged out?

Regards

Tobias

Security issues, licensing? 

Top of ideas:

https://docuware.uservoice.com/forums/230570-client-english/suggestions/...

https://docuware.uservoice.com/forums/230572-configuration-english/sugge...

And no actions from Docuware.

Too bad

I dont want someone sitting on a concurrent license if they are not active.

Hey all,

Not sure it has been made clear on this thread (but it has been mentioned in some others), but connections will timeout -- pretty quickly, actually -- already.

Fire up DWAdmin and watch the license screen. I just started a DocuWare web client session at 8:38, and my license use showed up, saying it would expire at 9:08, a reservation of 30 minutes.

I left the tab open in my web browser but did not do anything with the session. I used other browser tabs as usual.

I kept checking my expiration time for my license, and at 8:48 (10 minutes after initial license use), the expiration time changed to 8:50, just 2 more minutes. After 8:50, I was no longer using a license.

In summary, it looks like when a session goes idle, a license will only be in use for 12 more minutes. Ten minutes for the idle-detection timeout and then 2 minutes more for some built-in grace period DocuWare keeps in play to cushion session restarts (I don't care for it -- an explicit log off should immediately free the license, in my opinion). Overall, though, 12 minutes isn't really that long, and we have never had an issue running only 20 licenses for over 75 named, semi-active users.

An additional note -- even after my license usage had disappeared, I did a search in the DocuWare web page still displaying in my browser and it ran without me needing to log in again. So, being timed-out isn't even really a timeout, at least not in that it forced a re-logon.

All of this works the same way for Platform Service use: initial license grab is for 30 minutes, after 10 minutes of inactivity the expiration switches to 2 minutes from the current time, and even an explicitly called "LogOff" request still keeps the license in use for 2 more minutes.

Is a twelve-minute timeout something you can work with? Are you seeing something different in your license usage? I am running 6.11 on-premise with all the latest hotfixes and patches applied.

Thanks,
Joe Kaufman

Hi Benoit, 

thanks for your response. 

I understand that you have security concerns, however for security issues you should think of also locking the whole computer (with group policies after e.g. 15 minutes). Then not only DocuWare would be inaccessible but also any other application e.g. email, CRM and all other line of business applications. As also a lot of users store there password in the browser (also for DocuWare) locking the screen would result in a much higher overall security.

For the second topic about licensing, you maybe want to explain this a little more.

Thanks for the information. I will pass this along to my customer.

Tobias,

I assume with regard to licensing he simply means why keep a license burned when a connection goes idle. Hopefully the 12-minute timeout I explain in detail above is enough to mitigate that particular concern.

Workstation lockdown (and cached passwords -- not to mention Windows passthrough logins) is a good thing to bring up when it comes to true security at the connection level.

Thanks,

Joe Kaufman

Dear Tobias,

Joe is right, in my case, is mostly a licensing issue. 

The license price has doubled with DW 6.12.

In the past: 2 named licenses : 1  concurrent license 

Now: 4 named licenses : 1 concurrent license. 

Our customers are using a lot of concurrent licenses, and we often need to log out users. 

Kind Regards

Benoit,

Can you help me understand what exactly has doubled in 6.12? Coming from what?

We are on 6.11, which is what we initially started with coming from Fortis. Are you saying that if I upgrade us to 6.12 (something I believe I can do, as a 6.12 LIC file is available on our portal) that we are going to get billed double for our 20 licenses when we renew? I want to be sure I understand the pricing scheme before we think about upgrading!

As far as timing out users, how short would you set the timeout? As I state further up in the thread, the timeout is currently12 minutes. You need to go shorter than that? Could you perhaps consolidate certain use cases behind a Platform SDK program that gathers what users typically need under a single connection where you force a logoff after each request? That would knock the timeout down to two minutes. The other alternative is to keep a single connection alive and run everything through it, but then you have permissions issues because whatever you run everything through has to have access to everything. I am also not sure of the legality of that since it does an end-run around licensing. Using the Platform for certain document access scenarios could be a way of reducing overall concurent usage, though. If you are using DocuWare heavily for tasks and workflow, my idea does not hold water, obviously, but then I would also assume you don;t have that many truly idle connections if people are in the system all day working various workflow queues.

Thanks,

Joe Kaufman

Joe, you will not be billed with what you currently have. Just on new licenses going forward. You also can't purchase any new user licenses without being on version 6.12. So, if you want to add users, your system has be on at least 6.12. They moved to named licensing so he was just saying that 2 named licenses use to equal one current. No the cost to buy a concurrent license is now the cost of 4 named. Hope that makes sense.

Huh, well that sort of sucks. Just a pure price increase? I can see why folks on this thread want more control over their timeouts in that case!

Thanks,

Joe Kaufman

The behavior you outlined is what I would expect in any modern application where concurrent user licenses are sold, but it is not what we experience (on-premise 6.12).  Also, I have contacted DocuWare multiple times in regards to this issue and the response has always been simply that there is no automatic user inactivity based release of a license. Prior to posting this, I ran a test where I had a user log into DW on 1 tab, then open a second tab to a random website, then minimize the browser, then leave it unattended (on a remote server for to make sure there was no activity).  1 hour and 40 minutes later (and counting) that user is still occupying a license. This is consistent with previous tests.

I'm trying to figure out why our experiences would differ.

Jason,

If you are referring to me, a big difference might be that we are on 6.11, not 6.12. I am not sure why DocuWare cannot give you a definitive answer or support on this.

Thanks,

Joe Kaufman

The definitive answer is that Jason's behavior is exactly as I would expect from DocuWare. 6.11 or 6.12, or 7. I do not know where your 12 minutes is coming from Joe.

Phil Robson
Senior Director Support Americas

I'm not sure that I even want to know if the answer is that this feature was lost on the newer version. 

Phil,

That is the first I have heard that our installation behaves aberrantly! I have mentioned the way our licenses time out numerous times on several different threads, and no one ever said we were the exception to the rule. Our DocuWare is nothing special, vanilla installation on a virtialized Windows server with a SQL Server back-end.

The fact that the expiration reduces exactly ten minutes in tells me this has to be something in the DocuWare system. We do not employ any sort of network or web proxy timeouts (we can't -- all of our systems are network-file based, written in Visual Foxpro), and in any case, the timeout occurs for both web client access and Platform Service access.

I don't see how this can be on our end. You are saying not a single customer with on-premise 6.11 has licenses auto-timeout in this way?

If our licenses did not timeout in this fashion our entire installation would be in substantial trouble because we only have 20 licenses, and forcing a logoff call when using the Platform SDK is not reliable because of the two-minute "grace" period. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that if DocuWare did not behave the way it does for us that we might be shopping for a different document management solution. You've got me extremely uneasy that something could shift from under us and stop working the way it does, and overnight we could be in big trouble!

Thanks,

Joe Kaufman

Phil,

On this thread:

https://www.docuware.com/forum/english-forums/docuware-help-technical-problems/session-timeout-and-logged-users

another user states, "Since DocuWare has removed the functionality to set session timeouts..."

That was posted on June 27, 2018, making it sound like a semi-recent development. When did DocuWare remove the ability to control timeouts, and are you sure 6.11 does not still have the capability?

Thanks,
JoeK

You're giving me hope Joe.  I wish I knew how to replicate it!