Oracle Service Cloud has circa 500 configuration settings, which control the platform’s functions. Some of them are commonly used but many are not that well known. Below are a few that you might want to be aware of.
As most of you may already know, the access to functionality delivered via the OSvC Customer Portal web pages (e.g. self-service, chat, surveys) is charged per session. And a “session” is defined as a single 15 minutes time period of web visit activity.
A “web visit” is a series of customer interactions with the OSvC Customer Portal that can span one or more sessions. And the length of a web visit is configurable and allows you to track and report on activities by a single user for up to 12 hours.
A visit will be considered new in one of the following cases:
- The customer is inactive for longer than time defined in VISIT_INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT;
- The limit time defined in VISIT_MAX_TIME is hit;
- The browser is closed;
- The customer navigates way from the OSvC Customer Portal pages and the browser doesn’t support cookies.
Therefore it is important to understand what the above two configuration settings are.
VISIT_INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT
This configuration setting defines the period of time after which a web visit is considered to be expired due to inactivity. The default value is 30 minutes, the minimum value is 15 minutes, and the maximum value is 2147483647.
VISIT_MAX_TIME
This configuration setting defines a hard limit after which any web visit will expire. If a web visit is longer than VISIT_MAX_TIME, then a new web visit and session ID are generated. The default value is 240 minutes, the minimum value is 15 minutes, and the maximum value is 720 minutes (12 hours).
Apart from the two configuration settings above, it is also important to be aware of another two configuration settings, which apply to cases where the customer is logged in.
CP_LOGIN_MAX_TIME
This configuration setting defines a the maximum amount of time for the length of the customer login cookie. If a visit is longer than CP_LOGIN_MAX_TIME, then the customer will be required to login again. The default value is 0 (zero), which means that the login cookie will expire based on user inactivity specified by the CP_LOGIN_COOKIE_EXP configuration setting. The minimum value is 0 and the maximum value is 2147483647.
CP_LOGIN_COOKIE_EXP
This configuration setting defines the period of inactivity after which the login cookie will expire. The default value is 60 minutes. Value -1 means the cookie will expire when the browser is closed. And 0 (zero) means the cookie will never expire.
Doctor CX 
Thanks Luis,
this is very informative. it is also worth to note that the CP setting is a fine balance, setting it too low will impact the user experience. If there is a lot of detail to be read on a knowledge article for example, or a step by step guide to follow, it could result in them having to log in again after each action.
That is a great point to consider, Colin. My company’s answers can be quite lengthy as our products are very complex and technical.
I am using the CP Login Cookie Exp to kill cookies created by one of my custom widgets.
Thank you for the clarification between a web visit and a session Luis!
Love this Luis, great explanation on how web visits and the break down of what criteria define a NEW visit.
Thank you Luis for another great post. I like the way the topics are broken down into bite sized chunks and arranged logically. Looking to the list over to the right, I see I have a lot of reading to do!! 🙂
Quick Q in this… how does a cp session and it’s expiration relate to the billable aspect? Are these completely separate topics? Or do thee settings impact how an oracle customer is billed for the cp sessions?
Oracle charges session. Which is 15 minutes active period.
Good work Luis, Thanks for sharing 🙂
Q – In our incidents we view the website activity. If the guest is poking starts looking at the site a, b and c then is inactive for 30 mins with the browser open, then becomes active again and goes to d e f g – Would the activity show me a – c or just d- g if the VISIT_INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT is set to default 30?
TY!
This is interesting. We currently do not do a lot of user activity reporting, but it is an area that id like to start paying close attention to. Are these settings easy to report on? Are they located in a table, or how would that work?
When you’re implementing do you make many changes to this parameter or is it typically left alone? Given the session cost trips at 15 minutes would that make a good timeout or are session costs so cheap that it’s not usually a cost-issue for an implementation?
Never changed it Mark. Only the CP_ ones
Thank you for some great information. Thank you also to the other commenters who provided some very useful insights!
Best release notes on the planet!
We get asked this all the time by customers it will be great to have another resource to point them to
Great description! Definitely a challenge to clearly describe visits vs sessions and you did it like a Pro! 🙂 (not that I expected anything less from you)
This is great, thank you for the information
This tips are rich content for us!
Thank you for sharing, we were not aware of the -1 to allow the cookie to expire when the browser is closed.
Ahh yes, the good old visit/session problem. These settings have unfortunately become extremely familiar to me recently trying to work out why inactive users are getting logged out after about 10 minutes – not always, but pretty reliably. Not even OSC support have figured it out. Will trawl through this, thanks Doc
You are welcome Richard!
We are planning to use cookies to track the activity times.
Great Summary!!
Thank you for sharing this tips 😀
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you so much for sharing all this! Your blog is such a huge source of knowledge!
Thank you Trine, glad I could help
Great Tips!! Thanks for Sharing