HIP Tip: changing the timeout

This is in response to an email Anne Barnard posted to the Horizon-L mailing list:

I have my global settings session timeout set to 5 minutes, and my search timeout set to 2 minutes. I’m starting to get complaints from remote users that they timeout to quickly. How long are other libraries making their settings? We’re a public library and people frequently walk away without logging out.

I didn’t see anyplace where this could be set for profiles rather than globally.

Assuming that your public OPACs have a specific range of IP addresses allocated to them (e.g. you’ve set them up on their own subnet), then it’s possible to tweak the expiretimer.xsl to only use the timeout for those machines:

expiretimer.xsl

…the bits you need to add are shown in red, and you’ll need to amend the IP address accordingly.
If you need to check for multiple IP addresses, then simply expand that if statement, e.g.:

if(ip.indexOf(" 10.2.8")>0 || ip.indexOf(" 10.2.9")>0)

…will only run the timeout for IP addresses starting with 10.2.8.* and 10.2.9.*
There’s probably quite a few ways of achieving the above, so please let me know if you’ve got a simpler method!
The usual notes apply:

  • this worked fine with HIP 3.04 UK, but may not work with any other release
  • make sure you back the file up before editing
  • try it on a test HIP installation first