Overview of session timeouts in Spotfire

Products	Versions
Spotfire Server	7.5 and higher

Description

There are various session timeouts in Spotfire like absolute session timeout, idle session timeout, inactivityTimeout, and userSessionTimeout which will effect when a user's session will be closed. These timeouts can be configured as per your requirements. Below is an explanation of each timeout and the steps to change the default values.

Issue/Introduction

This article provides an overview and explanation of the various session timeouts in Spotfire.

Resolution

InactivityTimeout:

This specifies the length of time, in the format HH:MM:SS, that an analysis session can be alive on the Web Player service when no user activity has been detected, excluding pings. The range is 00:01:00 to Infinite. Default value is 2 hours.
When an analysis file is opened by a user and left untouched without performing any activity, the 'Idle time' count for that analysis file starts (Idle time is located at Monitoring & Diagnostics page > select the Web Player on which the analysis is opened > Under Overview you can see 'Idle time' column):
User-added image

Once the Idle time of the opened analysis file exceeds the inactivityTimeout value, then the analysis will get closed automatically and the 'Your analysis has been closed' message will be displayed with a 'Reopen analysis' button.

UserSessionTimeout:

This timeout effects how long a user session is cached on the Web Player service. If a user logs on to the web client and their session is left untouched without performing any activity then their session will be closed and the user will be logged out if userSessionTimeout is exceeded. The userSessionTimeout default value is 20 mins. UserSessionTimeout countdown will not begin if a user has an open analysis file.
If a user opens an analysis file and does not perform any activity then inactivityTimeout count starts, and if inactivityTimeout is met then the analysis file will get closed automaticaly and then userSessionTimeout count starts. If the user's inactivity exceeds the userSessionTimeout, then the user session gets closed automatically.

InactivityTimeout and userSessionTimeout are service level configurations and are present in the Spotfire Web Player's Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config configuration file. Below are the instructions if you want to change these timeouts default value:

On the computer running Spotfire Server, open a command line as an administrator and change the directory to the location of the config.bat file (config.sh on Linux). The default location is <server installation dir>/tomcat/bin or <server installation dir>/tomcat/spotfire-bin (for version 10.3 and higher)
On the command line, export the service configuration that you want to modify from Spotfire Server by using the export-service-config command. Example for default configuration:
```
 > config export-service-config --capability=WEB_PLAYER --deployment-area=Production
```
Open your "Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config" file with a text editor
Locate "inactivityTimeout" and "userSessionTimeout" and change their values according to your requirement
Save the file and import the configuration using the following command:
```
 > config import-service-config --config-name=Serviceconfiguration
```
Apply the configuration to Web Player services via the Spotfire Administration web interface (Nodes & Services > Web Player Services > Edit > Select the new configuration that you just configured) or via command line as below:
```
 > config set-server-service-config --capability=WEB_PLAYER --config-name=Serviceconfiguration
```
7. Restart the Node manager service.

Absolute session timeout and Idle session timeout:

A detailed explanation of Absolute session timeout and Idle session timeout can be found in the Absolute session timeout and idle session timeout documentation reference.

Absolute session timeout and Idle session timeout are server level configurations and are present in Spotfire Server configuration file. Default value of absolute session timeout is 24 hours and default value idle session timeout is 30 minutes and you can change these timeouts values as per your requirement using either UI Configuration tool or command line.