Automatic sign-out and staying signed in

For everyone's safety, Vianney signs a staff member out after a long stretch with nothing happening — so a computer left open at the front desk, or a laptop taken home and forgotten, does not sit there with the parish's records on screen.

The short version

• After 60 minutes with no activity you are signed out automatically. Your parish can be set to a different length — see below.
• About two minutes before that, a banner appears at the top of the screen with a countdown and an I'm still here button.
• However busy the day, one sign-in lasts at most 12 hours. After that you sign in again.

The warning banner

When roughly two minutes are left, a dark banner slides in at the top of the page reading "You'll be signed out in 1:52 due to inactivity." The countdown ticks down each second.

• Click I'm still here and the clock starts over from the beginning. The banner disappears and you carry on exactly where you were.
• You do not have to click it. Any click, keystroke, or scroll does the same thing, and the banner clears itself within a few seconds.
• Every Vianney tab you have open shows the same countdown, because the clock is kept by Vianney itself rather than by the page in front of you.

What counts as activity

Only something you actually do at the keyboard, mouse, or screen keeps you signed in.

• Yes: clicking or tapping, typing, scrolling.
• No: moving the mouse around without clicking anything.
• No: Vianney's own background refreshing. Screens quietly re-check for new information every few seconds so counts and lists stay current; that housekeeping never counts as you being there. This is deliberate — otherwise a screen nobody was sitting at would keep itself signed in forever.
• Working in any Vianney tab counts for all of them. You are signed in once, not once per tab.

Leaving Vianney open in a background tab

A tab you cannot see cannot count as activity. If you leave Vianney open behind another window, or on another desktop, and step away for the afternoon, the clock keeps running and you will be signed out on schedule — that tab quietly returns itself to the sign-in page. Coming back to a Vianney tab refreshes it at once, so you are never reading numbers that went stale while you were away.

The 12-hour limit

Quite apart from inactivity, a sign-in ends 12 hours after it began, however hard you have been working. You get the same two-minute warning, but I'm still here cannot stretch it — sign in again and you are straight back in.

If you are signed out in the middle of something

• The screen returns to the sign-in page. Sign in again and pick up where you left off.
• Anything you had already saved is safe — being signed out never undoes saved work.
• Anything typed on screen but not yet saved is not kept. If you are part-way through a long entry and the phone rings, it is worth saving before you turn away.
• One happy exception: the guided Add a person pages keep a draft on your own computer as you go — you will see a Draft saved note as you work. Start Add a person again after signing back in and your entry is waiting.

Your parish's own window

The 60 minutes is a parish setting, not a fixed rule. A shared computer in an open office might want 15 minutes; a rectory office behind a locked door might prefer four hours. Anything from 5 minutes to 12 hours can be set — raise it with support and we will change it for you. It reaches everyone within a minute or two, and nobody has to sign out and back in for it to apply.

Other ways in

• The parishioner portal has its own, shorter timing — see What parishioners can do in the portal.
• The phone app keeps its own sign-in and is not governed by this window.
• If you reach your parish through a cluster home screen, that sign-in follows the cluster's own timing, so you will not see the inactivity warning there.

Tips

• Being signed out for inactivity is not a fault with your account. See Signing in to Vianney to get back in.
• Sign-ins and sign-outs are recorded in the audit trail; an automatic inactivity sign-out is silent and leaves no entry.
• Signed out suddenly and repeatedly, or right after someone changed your access? That is something else: a role change, a deactivation, and a password reset each end your sessions on purpose. See Adding and managing staff.