OWA Session Timeout Ticking You Off?

Are your users complaining about the short session timeout for Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access? OWA users who have selected the "This is a private computer" login option either from home or at the office are subject to the default 10 minute session timeout. Use this easy fix to increase the value to something more acceptable to your users (if your local security policy allows it) say... 8 hours?

As you may know, Powershell can access the Registry directly, just as it can access the file system. There are two predefined psdrives available when you load Powershell that point to the Registry hives HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM) and HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU). You can add others if you choose by configuring your Powershell user or machine profile.

To use Powershell to add (or change) an entry in the registry to increase the OWA session timeout for "trusted" clients to 8 hours (480 minutes), use the Exchange Management Shell and type the following command or use Regedit: (the usual warnings apply)

New-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchange OWA' -Name TrustedClientTimeout -Value 480 -Type dword

Restart IIS from a command prompt using iisreset /noforce and your users will love you.

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