Recipe8.10.Changing OWA 2003 Session Timeouts

Recipe 8.10. Changing OWA 2003 Session Timeouts

Problem

You want to adjust the time out for OWA 2003 user's session.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

1. Log on to the OWA server.

2. Open the Registry Editor (regedit.exe).

3. Select the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSEx-changeWeb\OWA registry key.

4. Choose New DWORD Value from the Edit menu.

5. Name the new value PublicClientTimeout.

6. Double-click PublicClientTimeout and set its value to the number of minutes after which you want a logon session from a public client to time out. The default value is 15 minutes, but you can assign any value between 0 and 43,200 minutes.

7. Choose New DWORD Value from the Edit menu.

8. Name the new value TrustedClientTimeout.

9. Double-click TrustedClientTimeout and set its value to the number of minutes after which you want a logon session from a trusted client to time out. The default value is 1440, with a permissible range of 0 to 43200.

10. Stop and restart the WWW publishing service.

Using a command-line interface

The following commands set the timeout to 30 minutes: > reg add HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWeb\OWA     /t REG_DWORD /v "PublicClientTimeout" /d 30 > reg add HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWeb\OWA     /t REG_DWORD /v "TrustedClientTimeout" /d 30 > net stop w3svc > net start w3svc

Using VBScript

' This code sets the public and private machine timeouts for OWA 2003 ' ------ SCRIPT CONFIGURATION ------ strOWA = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWeb\OWA\" ' ------ END CONFIGURATION --------- Set objWSH = wscript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") objWSH.RegWrite strOWA & "PublicClientTimeout", 5, "REG_DWORD" WScript.echo "Public machine timeout set to 5 minutes." objWSH.RegWrite strOWA & "TrustedClientTimeout", 30, "REG_DWORD" WScript.echo "Private machine timeout set to 30 minutes."

Discussion

When you use FBA, as described earlier, the server generates a timestamped, encrypted cookie that it can use to determine when the user's OWA session should time out. OWA 2003 distinguishes between trusted clients, which are presumably secure, and public clients, which are machines (like airport kiosks or public-access terminals in hotels) that can't necessarily be trusted. There are separate timeout values for each of these client types, controlled by the two registry values previously described. Of course, since OWA can't tell what kind of client it's running on, the ultimate selection of a client type comes from the radio buttons on the OWA logon page: clicking Public or shared computer tells OWA to apply the public client timeout value, and clicking Private computer causes the trusted client timeout to apply.

See Also

Recipe 8.9 for setting up FBA, Chapter 2 of the Exchange Server 2003 Client Access Guide:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/guides/E2k3ClientAccGuide/7ff636d5-a97d-4ac9-a090-10eb428ccf83.mspx