Program to prevent website timeouts?

Question

I work at a help desk. There are about 20 of us here at this location. Our company has us logon to most of our applications (such as the password reset tools, ticket management system) via websites. Once we logon, the websites only seem to have about 10 minute timeout periods set. It is very aggravating to click a button to update a ticket, but if we don't hit SAVE within a few minutes, then it prompts us to logon again when we do, and then our updates are lost and our tickets are "locked" and in-use causing us to have to call out to get someone to unlock them. Our password reset tools are almost as aggravating. If we haven't done a password reset in 10 or 15 minutes then when we fill in the user info it will prompt us to logon, then we have to fill in the user info again.

Is there a 3rd party application we could use to "keep-alive" a connection to multiple websites so we are never timed out?

Unfortunately, changing these timeout periods is not an option. Our help desk is sub-contracted out, and the vendors that run the different applications we connect to via the web interface are also sub-contracted at some level, and the beuracracy makes it impossible for us to get anything done that would ease our job. But if there was a 3rd party application which we could set to re-fresh or re-logon every 5 minutes in the background to about 3 or 4 websites, then that would probably solve our issue. I was unable to find such a utility and wondered if anyone else has come across something similar before.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The time-outs are set at the server level. If you don't have the authority to change it at the server level or if nobody can change it for you, then no way you can do it. Time-out is there for security reason and for resource reason. To keep the session alive, it would take up server resources (i.e. memory), as the amount of session starts building up, more and more server resources will be sucked up. As a results, the performance of the server will suffer.

Most of these timed-outs are set to inactivity timed-out, meaning that it will only time you out when you are not actively browsing. As long as you make sure that you click on some links every 5 minutes or so, the session, technically, should stay alive.

Well, after posting my comments, some ideas came to my mind.
1) There are many software out there designed for people to do performance testing. One of the lead softwares out there is made by Mercury LoadRunner, http://www.mercury.com/us/products/performance-center/loadrunner/. This tool allows users to create scripts to simulate a user from logging on to anything a user would do on a web site. This is one of the tools that I am using, by the way. You can set it up to kick off every so many minutes. So, maybe you can use this tool to simulate a user logon every 5 minutes (or however long you want).

2) If the Mercury tool is bit too much for you, maybe you can create a batch file that would simulate the logon process. And then you just use a scheduler to run this batch file every 5 minutes (or however long you want).

Answer 2

The answer is NO. Get to whoever controls the server that you are logged on to. Let them increase the time-out time from that side so you stay in. It might actually end up being something of a management battle in the end, but argue your case, state that its important and they should bend.