Auto close a program after a period of inactivity

[Jeremy P Ferguson]

We have some client / server software that is needed by everyone in the
company but not all at one time to keep cost down we have about 200 users and
30 licences. This works well when users do there job and then shut down the
client side, thing is this is not happening. I am looking for a way of
closing the client automatically if it has been inactive for as 15 minutes.

 

[Vinson]

If you are good a scripting, you might explore WinBatch. It would be a
simple matter to create program that could countdown from 15 minutes (you
could even show this countdown on the thin-client's title bar) which would
ultimately close the program. Since Winbatch can also read certain dialogs
and such, you could have it reset if it sees a label apearing such as "Saving
work..." making only idle time count against the user. Obviously, this would
take some experimentation and may need to be attacked from another angle, but
the sky is usually the limit with coding creativity.

Vinson

 

[Jeremy P Ferguson]

The client is an application on the local computer (Thick Client ?) this is
the program that I am looking to shut down can I do this through scripting?

 

[Vinson]

You bet! You can do nearly anything with coding.

I recomended WinBatch because it designed for tasks like the one you want to
perform, but if you are not used to scripting, you might find it
overwhelming. I think you can download a trial copy to see if it is to your
liking, but I think scripting in some form will be needed to do what you need
to do. AutoIt is another scripting language to explore. Below are links to
try...

http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/
http://www.winbatch.com/

Vinson