Signals Notebook: Why do I get logged out of Signals Notebook?

There are multiple possible timeouts that impact end users, and whichever one gets applied first will cause a user to get logged out.

The system administrator gets to set a timeout in the administrator screen. This setting is applied in the user interface, if the user is inactive in the user interface for more than the defined time, the user will get logged out. Activity would include moving the cursor while a browser window containing Signals Notebook is active.

There is also a 30 minute timeout managed by the Signals Notebook servers, this timeout is not configurable by system administrators. If the user is not sending information from the user interface to the Signals Notebook servers for more than 30 minutes, the user is also logged out.

In order to understand why a user gets logged out it is important to know what the user was doing, or not doing, and what view of Signals Notebook was active. For example, if the user is viewing content, such as an experiment, then the user interface is continually checking for updates from the Signals Notebook server and hence the server based session is kept active. The user will be logged out only when they aren’t active in the user interface for longer than the admin defined timeout setting. For example, this could happen if they do not move the cursor while the browser window is active. If however the user is viewing dashboard type content such as the home dashboard, the Advanced Search page or one of the smart folders, then the user interface is not continually checking for updates. In this case the user will be logged out after 30 minutes. Also, if the users computer goes to sleep, or Signals Notebook is not the active browser window, then this timeout will also apply.

Forced logouts can be further modified if a system also uses an external application (IdP) for authentication, where that application manages a separate session timeout for the users authentication credentials. Once a user is logged in they stay logged in except when the scenarios above apply. However if the user is prompted to provide their credentials for a signing event, then that users session with the IdP could have expired and they could be forced to re-authenticate. Conversely, if the IdP is enabled to allow SSO (Single Sign On), even if the user is logged out in one of the scenarios above, the IdP may automatically log them back in again.