Service Plans and On-Premises environments create a session for each end user that interacts with them. This session is a private area of memory used to hold that user's state data for the duration of their visit.
Session data may consist of:
- Information loaded from a database.
- Data entered by an end user.
- User credentials.
Session Timeout
Each session is deleted after a period of time in which there has been no activity from that user.
The choice of the timeout value can impact both the total number of end users that can be supported at any one time, and the end user's experience when interacting with app.
The shorter timeout you set for end users, the sooner their session data is removed. This frees up memory for new end users, but can impact users who have not finished interacting with the application.
Tuning the session timeout depends on the use case for your application. For example, a booking system works well with a lower timeout but an application gathering large amounts of complicated data works better with a longer timeout.
The default 30-minute session timeout tries to find the best balance for the average application. You can alter the session timeout in the Settings page of the Cloud Portal and in the Admin Application of On-Premises environments.