in XIR2 there was an option (close browser log user out).
in BI 4.0 this option doesn’t exist.
The issue happens when a user closes their browser without clicking the LOG OFF button, their session remains active for 60 minutes. and when they log back in another session is created for the same user. it takes 60 minutes for the ‘ghost’ sessions to close.
we’ve had 1 user take up 7 of our 10 concurrent licenses.
reducing the timeout sessions causes poor users experience.
we are managing 10 concurrent lic for 200 users. this worked in XIR2, but we are getting “all 10 concurrent lic are used” errors now that these “ghost sessions” are staying open.
please do not suggest:
decrease timeout sesssions
installing a session management tool so we can manually end “ghost” sessions.
buy enterprise lic.
train users to click Log Off. (this workaround has already been communicated)
We are facing similar issues. It’s compounded by some users accessing the system with links directly to specific reports. This opens the report after asking them to log-in but the view given doesn’t contain the log-out button at all. So even if they wanted to they couldn’t log out.
Could you let me know where the XIR2 option to close browser log user out was? We are on XIR3.1 and hopefully it’s still there.
I am currently looking at implementing this in a non-standard way. I.e. a java script which uses http://:8080/InfoViewApp/logon/logoff.do when the user closes the BO window.
We currently monitor Concurrent License use with an email alert sent when thresholds are breached. Then use KillSessions to remove offenders where necessary. XIR3.1 doesn’t contain any standard ways to monitor licence use, but BI4.0 does have some monitoring feeatures. See here:-
in XIR2 you have an option in User preferences to “always log off, when browser is closed” it wasn’t a system setting, you have to log in as each user and set the preference. you could set it as the default for new users.
i don’t know if this was removed in 4 or XI3
the reason i was given was that microsoft changed it’s browser security to not allow processes after the browser was closed.
after the ititial rollout, (when everyone was jumping on to see the new system) we haven’t run into the concurrent lic being consumed issue. (knock on wood).
we are monitoring now for usage bottle necks, but things have been very smooth since the first hectic week of rollout.
Yes, that option is no longer available from XI 3 onwards. It is more of a Microsoft thing than BO.
Microsoft changed their browser behavior, after IE 6, to not allow scripts to run when the exit button is clicked. That’s why there is no option in BO.
Seeing that BOXI 3.1 SP5 works well with FireFox (15 or so) and with Chrome : if the option were there in CmC, we 'd recommend and install other browsers.
But if SAP drops the option to force a log-off …
In BO XI 3.1 we need to manually enable listener settings in web.xml. I dont have this information handy but you can check for that topic for automatic cleaning of sessions
The reason it was removed from SAP is as others have suggested, it was due to a browser change in the compatible/recommended IE versions.
Microsoft removed the ability to run a script on close as a security measure. The basic idea was that by allowing scripts to run, users could get easily caught into all sorts of trouble when malicious sites would popup additional browsers upon close, forcing the user into an endless loop and having to give thier PC the 3 finger salute to stop it.
I’m fairly sure both Firefox and Chrome have also removed this ability, but I thought I read somewhere that chrome had some sort of “click X to allow scripts and close” and “Ctrl-X to force close without scripts”, but I cannot locate any reference to it via google. Either way however, since BOBJ doesn’t officially support anything but IE, SAP isn’t likely to bring this back.
It would make for a great Idea Place suggestion , in that there needs to be some way to easily manage and drop sessions, but there’s really no way the system can ever know which sessions are real and which ones are ‘ghosts’… that’s the whole point of the timeout, to eliminate how long the ghost sits in the system.
EDIT: In talking with one of our web programmers it seems that there are in fact ways to run scripts on close after all… Microsoft only stopped specific events, but from what he was telling me there are some ‘tricks’ you can use such as an event that fires “before close”… not sure if that will help as I don’t have specifics, but bottom line is that i’m being told there is in fact a way to call something just before the browser closes via the red X. (We’re trying to force it to terminate the session ourselves… will post a solution if/when we get it working)
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