GPO to log out idle users

Question

Dear All,
Is there any GPOs or task schedulers methods that can log out idle users ?

Pls assist.

Answer 1

You could do this using Task Schedule, you will need to create a task and set it to Run only when user is logged on and select Conditions and check the box to Start the task only when computer is idle for ** and set the time when you want system log out when idle like 10 minutes. Under **Actions tab set to run a program and add the following script

shutdown -L  

To log off the user.

Answer 2

Here's how we just did this:

created a text file with the line: C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /l /f and then changed the extension to .cmd

then, created a local scheduled task to run that .cmd file after targeting the folder we want it to ultimately be in locally. For our example, we located the .cmd file in C:@installers\Scripts

Once we tested that the Scheduled Task worked, we exported it to an XML file.

We then put those files on a universally available/accessible share

Next step we created an OU and put the targeted machines in there. Created a GPO in that OU that first copied those files from the share to the local folder on the machine and set it to Update (in case we wanted to update the way either file functioned down the road.) We did this under the computer configuration. Then under user configuration, we created a scheduled task on logon to:

Run: pwsh.exe

Arguments: -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "\FILEPATH\AutoLogoff.ps1" or whatever you name your PS1 file

Start in: C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\ (we have Powershell 7 installed in our image by default. You location may vary)

The Powershell file has a single line to import the XML scheduled task:

Register-ScheduledTask -Xml (Get-Content '\path to file\AutoLogoff.xml' | Out-String) -TaskName "AutoLogoff" -Force

Hope that helps