By default, when you sign into Zendesk, your session remains valid as long as user activity occurs. Also, by default, a session will timeout after 8 hours of inactivity.
- User activity is defined as when you click something explicitly in the Zendesk user interface, or when the application pulls information automatically in the background. Information pulls happens often to keep the Zendesk interface up to date, but pulls don't occur uniformly across all Zendesk pages.
- The Zendesk timeout countdown starts when you close your browser, or quit the browser tab where the Zendesk session is running. The timeout countdown can also be triggered when you put your computer to sleep or turn it off. When the timeout limit is reached, Zendesk terminates your sign in session, and you have to sign in again to use Zendesk.
- An individual session is immediately terminated once you explicitly sign out of Zendesk.
Staff members have a configurable session duration, but end users have 8 hours set by default.
There are other technical differences and edge cases, but the main idea is that if a user is active, they will never be signed out. If they are inactive, the session will last 8 hours.
Another factor that can impact session timeout is:
- A Zendesk administrator can extend the 8 hour timeout for staff members and set a custom session expiration as part of the Advanced > Authentication security policy . Reach out to your Admin if you have questions around the session duration.
7 Comments
How can I extend the session expiration for customers to 2 weeks? The control on /admin/security/advanced#authentication only gives option to change it for staff login.
Hey Raza,
Thanks for reaching out to us with your question. At this current time, there is no native way to enable a 2 week extended session for your end-users. This will need to be a feature request and I would recommend reaching out to our forums here on it. Let us know if you need anything else :)
Russell
Hi All
Just wondering does anyone know what the Zendesk session time is for end users? (eg: when they login to the Help Centre / customer portal) how long before their session expires?
Hey Chad! End-users' session expires after 8 hours of inactivity :)
Hi Zendesk,
My agents and I would like to stay connected all the time.
How can we deactivate the session time?
Hi,
How can I access the current logged in session id in my help centre code?
Hi Neha,
The current session ID isn't referenced anywhere by the Help Center theme. But you can still access it in your theme by sending a client-side request to the Sessions API to return the currently authenticated session.
Best,
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