Forcing Users to Log Off
”We’ve got a problem with users not logging off their workstations. How do you handle this?”
Again, and example from my wife's business:
She has a number of shared workstations—in fact no employee has their own, dedicated workstation. So this is a real concern for them. To make matters worse, we don't want to automatically shut their sessions and log them out, lest they have unsaved work on their desktops (lesson plans, letters to parents, etc.).
Here's what we do:
We programmatically enforce a screen lock after 5 minutes of inactivity, which requires the user's password to unlock. With a feature of Mac OS X, however, the screen lock becomes identical to the initial login panel, and gives the system the ability to log another user in ("switch user"). In this way, a user's session state can be saved while another user uses the system.
Finally, we don't allow a user to be logged on to multiple systems simultaneously. Consequently, they are chained to the workstation they're logged in on until the other employee is done, which provides incentive to save their work and log off.
/jonathan
Weblog Entry
Monday, July 2, 2007
Entry Notes
Category: Sometimes it’s easy
Event: Typical student question.
Weather: WTF? 100F in MT?!
Other Details:
Man is it hot. Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. The plural of “anecdote” is not “evidence,” so this isn’t proof of global warming, right? But Holy Jesus is it hot here. In Montana.
