Automatic Support Sessions End on inactivity

I was just trying to find a solution for this myself.

Ours isn't necessarily for compliance however this would be a incredibly helpful feature.

Hi Roberto,

Enabling SupportSessionExpireSeconds located in the web.config settings will help clear out disconnected sessions after a period of time.

What mean SupportSessionExpireSecond ? Host disconnected ? Guest Disconnected ? Host and Guest Disconnected ?

The session will expire after a time period has passed where the host has been disconnected.

This doesn't work, at least in the hosted platform. Sessions seem to disappear but they aren't actually terminated. A reboot of the PC or changing a configuration option that restarts the instance brings back old instances. People end up creating multiple sessions to the same guest. After an instance restart, there are multiple old sessions in the list. Other oddities include sessions that disappear and then reappear. Recent sessions are fine, just old ones are an issue. I'm currently looking at a session that hasn't had a host connection in 11 days. I have another that hasn't had an active host in 4 days.

Thank you. it would be very useful to can control different expiration for: Host not connected, Guest Not Connected, None connected, so instead of cleaning manually.

Thank you

I've just set to 120, but the support session with no Host connected, does not seem to close after this expiration time

I Think SupportSessionExpireSeconds allow to close support session for which there is not connection. No connection of Hosts and no connection for Guest. My Request is for a new feature, as stated before, to allow automatic management (End Sessions) of disconnected parties situations, so one can End session after specific expiration time for: Only Guest Connected, Only Host Connected, Both Connected, Neither Connetced.

I'm not sure if this is the same issue we have. We don't allow "access" sessions but our techs have gotten into the habit of never ending their "connect" sessions thereby creating backdoor access sessions when these connect sessions are left running indefinitely. There is currently no way to end them automatically and I have to manually end these sessions every day.

Pfp,

Well, what currently happens with enabling SupportSessionExpireSeconds (you can also replace Support with Meeting or Access) is the session will only be hidden from the host page if there isn't a host or guest connected after the period of time you set.

Roberto is suggesting this setting be more granular to include the following:

(1) expire when a guest is not connected but a host is after xx seconds

(2) expire when a host is not connected but a guest is after xx seconds

I suggest you try out the setting to see how it works out for you.

Note: Using this will not end the sessions but simply hide them. If you set this setting back to 0 the sessions will reappear.

I mean disconnecting sessions not only hide. As Pfp says, Hosts Always leave support sessions open and we have to manually disconnect old sessions. It is very useful to have an Automatic Mechanism ti disconnect old sessions Automatically.

We requested this some time ago. 6.1 includes the option to force the session to end when the hosts disconnect so that they can't be left open. This is an acceptable approach for us, and we'll be implementing it, although what is talked about here, where the session is ended after XX seconds that the host has disconnected (to keep the hosts from coming back later without explicit permission), would be a preerable implementation.

Where is this setting at?

I would like to implement this myself, I imagine it is something to be changed in the web.config?

The option is AlwaysEndSessionOnExit, but it isn't implemented until 6.1, which I think is still in controlled relaease.

The setting will be in the app.config extension as AlwaysEndSessionOnExit in 6.1. This will end support and meeting sessions, but does not currently apply to access sessions. I will leave this topic open so we can look at allowing partners to set a time before a session is removed based on host, guest, and host/guest disconnection.

AlwaysEndSessionOnExit can be defeated by the host (support tech) killing the ScreenConnect.WindowsClient.exe task on their machine. Doing this disconnects the host but leaves the session running for them to come back to later. This is effectively the same as choosing end session which is no longer an option for them.

Hey pfp,

Killing the process through the task manager does just disconnect the session, and that's intended behavior. Ending a session is only possible through the application UI. Why are hosts killing the session through the task manager?

"...it is being implemented in the spirit of being a compliance measure, which shouldn't have any "loopholes" once set by an admin on the server."

Loophole!

I vote for fixing loophole, too (i.e. AlwaysEndSessionOnExit  being overriden by killing ScreenConnect.WindowsClient.exe, as mentioned by pfp).  I didn't test it myself, so can't vouch for the steps.

Thanks!

Hello,

If you would like us to consider this request please create another submission. This request is for allowing admins to set a time before a session is ended based on how long a host, guest, or host/guest has been disconnected.

Thanks. 

I would LOVE to see more customizable Database Maintenance Plan Actions (and schedule options) including more variables similar to what session groups have.  For example, "Support: Delete Host and Guest connections where session name = "Untitled Session" and no host (and or guest) activity for xx minutes/hours/days.  This would be especially important after the version 6.3 was released.  I'm now having to manually delete 20+ support sessions a day named "Untitled Session" because employees aren't scrolling down past the legit existing support sessions to delete them.

Hello,

If you would like us to consider this request please create another submission. This request is for allowing admins to set a time before a session is ended based on how long a host, guest, or host/guest has been disconnected.

Thanks. 

I'd like to add my vote for this feature.  Cleaning up the Host admin page is a pain.  I don't want to terminate sessions when the host exits as sometimes we need to come back to a session at a later time, such as if the client agrees a time with us when there machine is available, but we want to get the session established ready for then so we can join.

Ideally we'd be able to set a policy that says when a session has been inactive for 'x' hours, end it automatically, then our host support admin page would look a lot cleaner.

Per the email 

" 1. Build an extension that adds a button to the interface for an admin to manually end sessions that meet the criteria set (host disconnection time, guest disconnection time, and host + guest disconnection time). These will be extension settings."

I support this feature.    I have enabled the option to end a session on closing the last host - yet every day we end up with multiple sessions still working.

ie. This morning I came in to see 20+ sessions still listed from yesterday - some of them the clients had reconnected when they came into work this morning.   This is a huge potential privacy concern if they found out we were still connected.

We tried the force end on last host disconnect,  but this proved to be an annoyance as there were legit times you would disconnect (handing off to someone else, want to close and reconnect due to bad connection, etc).

What I want is to be able to automatically end sessions where no 'host' has been connected for > 2 hours  or where no one is connected (client or host) for > 30 minutes.

Similar to the posts above it would be amazing for us if we where able to automate the closure of our connections after a specified period of time

Ideally we would want to be able to configure this automation based on user profile / roles as some of our users would need to be able to connect / disconnect to a clients PC over an extended period of time, sometimes this can be up to 1/2 weeks 

In most cases though after a short period of inactivity on the hosts end we would require the session to be closed, something along the lines of 2 hours would suffice. Or as Kent listed above, if no client or host is connect then the session is closed within 30 mins 

Ending sessions upon exiting isn't flexible and there are conditions where sessions can end up being left open even if that's enabled. Being able to automatically end sessions without hosts after some amount of time is useful both as a complimentary setting to always ending sessions upon exit and as a standalone setting.

After 4 years and the feature is still not added?  Support just recommended I request this.

Unfortunately still not a possibility to configure this. Support asked me to create a feature request.

We would like to end/delete the session after xx number of seconds/minutes/days no matter the status.

As support staff doesn't end their sessions they remain open (and guest connected) but would like limit the time a support session is active to eg: 2 days and then end it.

Preferred based on the start date/time but if this can be a maintenance task at the end of the day that would be fine to.

The session should be ended as if you delete it manually so also ending the remote agent process.