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Webdirect "Session Expired" on Mobile too Early


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I've developed a webdirect solution which is working great on desktops, but I'm running into a weird quirk on mobile. When users leave safari (on an iphone) and make a call, open their calendar, etc - even for as little as 3 minutes - when they come back to safari they have to re-authenticate because the session has expired. (This is for a sales team that makes calls and schedules appointments, so they spend 2-5 minutes on the phone and in their calendar app before returning to safari to enter the details into the database.)

My guess is the phone is suspending safari processes to conserve battery, and if the users open other apps it's forcing safari to need to reload the page, hence the re-authenticate. I have set the session timeout to 20 minutes on FMS, and I have no issues on desktops, so there must be something on the client side triggering this.

One alternative I thought of was to use Filemaker GO. (At least for the IOS users.) I don't have the issue there, but sorting is dreadful in FM Go. I love how webdirect handles sorting on the server and sends over chunks at a time. FM Go takes forever to download a few hundred files and THEN sort. (To it's credit, it's faster than webdirect once everything is downloaded, but on mobile with patchy connectivity it's not a good option for me.)

I am at a loss for solutions - if there are any - but thought I'd ask. Is there anything I can do about the session timeout issue with webdirect on mobile? (Was considering wrapping the solution in a custom app to potentially help dedicate memory to it, but not sure if that would make a difference.) Thanks in advance!

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Maybe you haven't set the fmreauthenticate extended privilege set? Here is some info on it: http://www.portagebay.com/blog/2017/2/1/fmreauthenticate-refresher

But that's probably not the problem; there is a bug/incompatibility in Safari on iOS that causes this.

Some more info here: https://community.filemaker.com/message/596560#596560

Quote

DavidCushworth 14-nov-2016 18:38 (in antwoord op tkessler45)

It is an issue with Safari and Java.   For some reason Safari has a problem with the javascript.    I have submitted the error before and I believe it has been referred to the Safari Tech people

It works OK in Chrome though.   So until Apple fixes Safari you are going to have to use another browser.

Tbh it looks like if you can't change the browser you can't do much but wait and see if FM16 or an iOS update fixes it. 

 

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On 3/11/2017 at 3:43 PM, theusualsuspect said:

One alternative I thought of was to use Filemaker GO. (At least for the IOS users.) I don't have the issue there, but sorting is dreadful in FM Go. I love how webdirect handles sorting on the server and sends over chunks at a time. FM Go takes forever to download a few hundred files and THEN sort.

 

The question then is: do you really need to work with found sets of a few hundred?  Probably not if you analyze it.  Nobody can keep a mental overview of a few hundred records.  It's easy for us because we can let up to the user to sort and get to the data they need.  But the fact that need to sort a few hundred records probably indicates that only need to see the 10 or so records as per the sorted.  So perhaps you can give them just that directly.

The same applies for WebDirect; designing for this kind of WAN performance is all about performance and user experience (no delays).  So think thrice about all the data you make transfer between the server and the client...

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Thanks guys for the replies. I remember when working with IWP that I needed to have buttons for the "next 25" and "previous 25" in found sets, since that's all IWP could handle. I haven't looked into how to recreate a list view with only XX numbers of records per page (some sort of portal perhaps?) but that would definitely speed things up.

Regardless, I've got Android people to deal with so I'm still stuck with the browser issue. (Perhaps I can put my webidrect solution in an android app that uses Chrome's web engine?) I'll double check my fmreauthenticate privileges, and hope the bug gets worked out. Thanks so much!

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