Understanding Logon Sessions
Each adTempus job runs under the identity of a Windows user. To accomplish this, adTempus either creates a new logon session for the user or attaches to an existing logon session.
Logon sessions can be interactive or non-interactive.
- An interactive session is what you get if you sit at the computer (or connect to it through Remote Desktop). When adTempus runs a program in an interactive session its user interface is visible to any user who is connected to the same logon session.
- A non-interactive session is not visible or accessible to users connected to the computer; there is no way for a user to interact with the user interface of a program that runs in such a session.
Though visibility of programs to users is the main difference between interactive and non-interactive sessions, there are other differences in how these sessions behave, and how programs run within them behave.
Most programs that you automate are designed to support unattended execution, and can run without needing a user interface or interaction with the user. For these programs a non-interactive session (the default in adTempus is suitable.
However, some programs were not intended to be run this way, and may present problems when run non-interactively:
- Programs may display pop-up messages that require user response. When this happens in a non-interactive session, there is no way for a user to see such prompts and respond to them. This causes the program to appear to be hung, as it is waiting for user response.
- Programs with extensive user interfaces may not work correctly in a non-interactive session, even when no interaction is required. Most notably, users attempting to automate Microsoft Office applications (Word and Excel) often run into problems because these programs are not designed to work non-interactively.
While adTempus is able to log in on behalf of a user to create non-interactive logon sessions, Windows does not provide a direct way for adTempus to create an interactive logon session. adTempus is, however, able to "attach" to an existing interactive logon session and run programs in it. Therefore adTempus has always supported running jobs in interactive logon sessions as long as the logon session already existed. This required that a user log in to the computer (directly or through Remote Desktop) and then leave the session connected so that adTempus could connect to it.
Automatic Interactive Sessions Using Remote Desktop
5.1
Beginning with version 5.1, adTempus can create interactive sessions automatically using Remote Desktop. It does this by creating a Remote Desktop connection from the computer running adTempus to the same computer.
To use this feature the program where adTempus is running must be configured as follows:
- Remote Desktop connections must be enabled for the computer.
- The user whose account the job runs under must have permission to connect to the computer through Remote Desktop.
- You must not have a logon message configured that the user has to acknowledge before logging on, because adTempus cannot detect and dismiss such a message. For example if your security policy has the "Interactive logon: Message title for users attempting to log on" and/or "Interactive logon: Message text for users attempting to log on" set, this will prevent adTempus from completing the Remote Desktop connection.
Once these prerequisites are met, you can enable enable automatic interactive sessions as follows:
- In the Server Options window, check the Create interactive logon session when needed option; and
- In the Job Settings for each job, set the User Interaction to "Interactive required".
Note that when this feature is enabled, it applies to all jobs using the "Interactive required" setting; it is not currently possible to use automatic interactive sessions for only some jobs or users.