Portal Timeout and Auto-Save Functionality

Question

We are exploring whether the client portal has a timeout mechanism for inactive sessions. Specifically:

Does the portal automatically log out users after 15 minutes of idle time or total login duration ?

If a timeout occurs, is there an option to auto-save the user&rsquo;s progress to prevent data loss?

user logs into the client portal to update Location details. While entering data, the user gets distracted or steps away for more than 15 minutes. If the session times out, any unsaved data is lost, potentially requiring the user to re-enter all information.

Mathieu Drouin · Answer

I have the same question as Stefan re Portals vs Sites but regarding #2 there is no autosave currently in Appian.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

In that case then I assume you could implement something manually. You would basically be forced to "cache" every user input immediately upon their inputting it (i.e. sending to some sort of temprary table, etc), then once they successfully submit the portal form, "clear" that "cache". Therefore any time they "log in" (via your bespoke login system), the form would check whether there are any outstanding "cache" entries and use that to pre-populate their form.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

you'd also need to manually build a "timeout", assuming this functionality works in a Portal (which i haven't tested) - you'd merely load a local variable (at page load) that stores the time of first load, then set an auto-refreshing local variable to the current time (updating every .5 or 1 minute), and once the delta between the two variables grows to whatever you want your "timeout" to be, simply hide the original form and instead display a "page timed out" message. 
 Assuming that you've had the form "cache" all of their previous inputs as I described in the prior comment, now they'll be forced to reload their form and after they "log in" again, it should pre-populate anything they'd entered.