Service Desk Session Timeout - Container-Based Session Timeout

Service Desk includes an internal session timeout setting which can be configured by the administrator in the Setup > Privileges > System | General Settings area (Session Timeout).
All open sessions are automatically terminated after a period of inactivity that matches the specified interval.

In addition to this, servlet containers that comply with Sun's* Java* Servlet Specification** version 2.3 and higher include their own session termination functionality.

Within such a servlet container, session timeout values are configured on a servlet-by-servlet basis. Each servlet defines its own session timeout value in its deployment descriptor file (located in the servlet's WEB-INF folder and usually named web.xml). Inside the deployment descriptor file, the timeout value is specified in minutes inside a session-timeout tag which in turn is wrapped in a session-config tag.

To specify Novell Service Desk's container-based session timeout value, open the following file in a text editor:

Under Apache Tomcat, the Novell Service Desk_DEPLOYMENT_DIRECTORY is located at:

 Look for the following lines (insert them if they aren't already present):

 

In this example, the session timeout value is set to 30 minutes. 

It is recommended that the the container-based session timeout value be configured to MATCH the value specified in the Setup > Privileges > System area. If the container-based session timeout value is less than the value specified in the Setup > Privileges > System area, the container will cut sessions short. If the container-based value is greater than the system's value, the container's sessions will linger and continue to tie up server resources for longer than is necessary.

Note: Although the servlet specification allows the use of 'never-ending' sessions by setting the container's session timeout value to a number less than or equal to zero, it is not recommended.