When to Log Users Out of Estimating Automatically

Administrators performing system maintenance tasks occasionally need to log one or more users out of the system, as described in the following sections.

Important: When forcing logout, all unsaved changes will be lost. Try to contact users directly before forcing logout.

You need to update the system or take a backup of the system

When you update your application to a new version or take a backup at a particular point in time, it is best if all users are logged out so that there is a clear cutoff to activities that affect the database. In the case of a backup, having all users logged out ensures that you know what is included in the backup at the moment it is taken.

You need to free up a license so that it is available for another user

There may be a situation where a user is logged in to the application but is not actively using the application. In this case, you can free up the occupied license to make it available for another user. See Log Users Out Automatically for details.

License Monitor

You can determine how many users are logged into the system and automatically log users out of the system using a function available in the License Monitor. When you select to automatically log out a user, a pop-up window displays for the user in the application.

Note: It may take up to 10 seconds for the message to be displayed to the user.
The pop-up window displays the following system text by default: 
Your administrator needs to close Estimating. The application will exit in {n} minutes.
In the License Monitor:
  • You can configure additional text to append to the message above. For example, you may include in the message a phone number where users can reach you if they are in the middle of critical operations and are unable to log out.
  • You can set the number of minutes after which the user(s) will be automatically logged out. The number of minutes is displayed as a countdown in the message to the user. If needed, you can cancel the automatic logout any time before the countdown expires. When the countdown expires, the License Monitor will try to automatically log the users out of the application.

If the automatic logout is successful, the user's application closes, and that user no longer shows as active in the License Monitor. If the automatic logout is not successful, the user's application remains open, and that user continues to show as active the License Monitor. In this case, you can choose to force logout, which will immediately terminate the user's application session without warning.