Many times organization users remain signed in and leave their workspace open and which can be dangerous sometime as most of your valuable information resides in your Office 365 account (i.e. emails, files, events, videos, chat history and a lot more). Well now you can control this as an IT administrator. Office 365 has introduced a wonderful feature called Ideal session sign-out. 

Here are steps to configure it

Step 1: Navigate to your SharePoint Online Admin center

Go to https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal and navigate to SharePoint Admin center

Click on Try it now for new Admin center

Step 2: Configure idle session sign-outs

From your new Admin center, click Access Control from Side Navigation

Select Idle session sign-out option from your Access control screen

Enable sign out inactive users automatically 

As soon as you enable the option, you will see two more settings to configure:

Sign out users after

This means, if the user is inactive after the configured value here, he / she will be signed out automatically 

Give users this much notice before signing them out

That means before the given time of sign out, user will start seeing below popup and they still have option to remain signed in

Save your settings and you are done!

Frequently asked questions

Q: What are the default sign-out values for Office 365

A: Here is a table showing default timeouts.

Q: How long we have to wait for the above settings to get effected?

A: Microsoft says it takes around 15 minutes but we had to wait a big longer so please give it a longer time (i.e. nearly 8-10 hours). You can however try after 15 minutes and please be aware that it will only work for new sign-ins and not already signed in sessions.

Q: Does the policy effect existing signed in sessions?

A: No, only new sign-ins 

Q: Is it possible to hide keep me signed in option while logging in?

A: Yes, admins can hide this option from admin center.

Note: This setting will only work when user doesn't select to stay signed in