Increase the authentication time-out of a session

[dwilliams]

I have users that leave their search pages open for long periods of time
before coming back to the page. If they perform a search, they are
presented with an error that the session has timed out. Can anyone point
me in the correct direction to increase this time-out? We are on
Windchill 9.1 M040 and we are not using Form Based authentication.



I appreciate your advice,

Dax Williams
Engineering E-Tools Administrator
GE Healthcare OEC

Surgery

[AL_ANDERSON]

The following is the entry in <wt_home>\codebase\WEB-INF\web.xml

<session-config>
<session-timeout>120</session-timeout>
</session-config>

This entry is applicable for Windchill 10 as well.

We set this to "120" so that the search will not time out for 2 hours (120
minutes). We originally went live in PDMLink 9.1 with this setting at
"30," but too many people complained about the search error whenever they
got up to get a cup of coffee or go to an hour long meeting - especially
since the error is not not user friendly, nor is it intuitive or helpful.

We have not had any problems since moving to the "120" setting.

Al Anderson

[ddemay]

Some thoughts...

A lengthy time does make it difficult to determine system usage. Audit records key off tomcat session management. The time session terminates.

You go idle for 1 hour and 15 minutes, it resets. The root cause of all the search results being cached in user's session and a better workaround could be developed. the technology is deprecated.

PTC should instead dump the results to the user's browser and use JavaScript to render the data in a table. Especially now browsers have better history and undo close tabs.

Windchill 10 using Google's toolkit for page and UI generation. Folders and contents appearing while page is still loading is good way to avoid the session issue.

Think omitting Info*Engine in searching is the key.

A better error message is a good start.



Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

[dwilliams]

Al and Dave,

Thank you for your solution and insight. I'll give this a try on our
dev. environment. Two Hours seems like an acceptable limit.



Dax Williams
Engineering E-Tools Administrator
GE Healthcare OEC

Surgery