User sessions are automatically generated when someone (a human or bot) starts using a Fluid Topics portal.
- Anonymous users, who are not logged in, also have a user session.
- If users are anonymous, the same user session is kept when logging into Fluid Topics.
By default, Fluid Topics logs users out of the portal after 30 minutes of inactivity. This is called an "idle timeout," and it ends the user session. Users with the ADMIN or PORTAL_ADMIN role can define a different value for the idle timeout or prevent Fluid Topics from triggering an idle timeout in the General tab of the Authentication administration interface.
Leaving a page open is not sufficient to prevent an idle timeout from taking effect.
Examples
- The following diagram shows the example of Lucy who accesses the portal but never authenticates nor does anything on the portal. Her session expires after 30 minutes. When Lucy makes a new a request, a new session starts.
- The following diagram shows the example of Safie who accesses the portal but remains anonymous. She makes a request on the portal and then authenticates 15 minutes after opening the portal. Five minutes later, she makes another request and then remains inactive for 30 minutes. Her session expires 50 minutes after opening the portal. When making a new request, a new session starts and she is invited to authenticate again.
- The following diagram shows the example of Peter who accesses the portal and authenticates right away. His last request occurred 20 minutes after first accessing the portal. He then remains inactive for 30 minutes. His session expires 50 minutes after opening the portal. When making a new request, a new session starts and he is invited to authenticate again.
