Managing situation where logged in user walks away

[pw415]

This concerns iMacs in a public work space where many different users login with their Active Directory username and password. The iMacs are Windows domain-bound and running El Capitan. ‘Log out after 15 minutes of inactivity’ is turned on. Screen saver comes on after 20 minutes. ‘Require password immediately after sleep or screen saver begins’ is turned on and this setting cannot be changed. These settings are needed to protect information that may be on the display.



The problem occurs when a user leaves an Office document open and walks away. After 15 minutes the OS tries to log them out but is interrupted by ‘Do you want to save the changes made to the document?’ No one is there to respond to this prompt so logout is cancelled. After 20 minutes the screensaver comes on. At that point no one but the logged in user can put in their password and access the desktop. There is no option to restart/shutdown or login as another user. My only option, as far as I know, is to do a hard shutdown.



Does anyone know of a way to prevent this from happening, maybe by turning off ‘Do you want to save the changes made to the document?’, or by logging out the user or restarting without doing a hard shutdown.



THANK YOU.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and sorry it took us so long to respond!

In multiple-user environments, unfortunately this is a very common occurrence. Unless you are running some form of enterprise management system or have Apple Remote Desktop setup and configured on the Macs, your only recourse is to do a hard power off as you mentioned. I don't know of any way to disable "Do you want to save the changes made to the document" on the Office applications. Users should be more diligent in logging off when they are finished working, but that is very rarely the case, even with proper training.

-Do you have any enterprise management system in place?
-Do you have the ability to setup and use Apple Remote Desktop?

C

 

[pw415]

Thank you for responding. I've begun remotely connecting to the computers via SSH and restarting them. Ideally, I would find a way to prevent it from happening in the first place but that doesn't appear to be possible.