Links to Esri Community posts only work correctly about half the time, sometimes just go to home page

[Will]

When I share links to others to particular posts or discussions in the Esri Community, the links only work properly about half the time.  Specifically, half the time it will go to the correct post/discussion, but the other half of the time the same link will just go to the Esri Community home page, which is confusing, because I think sometimes the recipients of my links experience that same behavior and may assume I'm asking them to find the post/discussion from the home page which of course is unreasonable.  Does anyone else experience this problem? If anyone has insight on how to fix this it would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

[BlakeMorrison]

Thanks for the detailed response, Jesse. I'm really glad someone is finally taking this seriously after almost a year. Is there any reason you guys are looking into premature login timeouts, or for any deeper issue? Atleast related to this thread, I've not seen any mention of such things. Maybe that's where the confusion lies?

[JesseCloutier]

@BlakeMorrison In explanation, our team had dealt with (and resolved) an issue last year that involved premature forced logouts. Some of the details in this thread bore a resemblance to the other experience as well as some timeline overlap. That initially led our team to consider that this ongoing group of messages concerning forced logouts and URL redirects might stem from that issue not having fully been resolved as we'd believed or that it had returned. I think your identifying this as a point of confusion is probably fair and I apologize for any frustration resulting from that. Though we’ve since updated our perspective to be that the former premature logout issue probably isn’t taking place now and that the heart of the issue instead revolves around members advocating for some changes to the way our forced logouts work, we are still working with our platform vendor on final conclusions to rule out an error. 

[BlakeMorrison]

That makes more sense. Thank you for the clarification. I understand what's been happening here now.

Heads up, I haven't managed to capture a screenshot or the text itself, but when the forum does do the force logout and redirect, the URL has a "redirect" parameter that points to "https://community.esri.com". Your previous comment about the forum software people suggesting a custom feature is required to choose where things redirect doesn't sound right. Especially if there is a redirect parameter in the URL already. Ie. I don't believe them.

[JesseCloutier]

Hi @BlakeMorrison, taking a moment to confirm that I shared your message with our team member who is in communication with our platform vendor about this. Based on the initial conversation, the takeaway was that custom logic may be required to define where to send a user next after a forced logout, which informs our current understanding around any potential update. There is still some conversation taking place to discern context and requirements, and your observation is appreciated.

[JesseCloutier]

@BlakeMorrison, @Will, @Bud, our team has just finished testing an update in regards to Esri Community's URL redirect behaviors following a forced logout.

Forced logouts will still occur after eight hours from the time of logging into Esri Community since that's a security procedure, however, the update we've implemented makes it so that users should not be redirected to the Esri Community home page as a result of that logout. Instead, immediately following the logout they should be directed to the page they were attempting to view, whether that's from following an email notification link, a search engine result, or from a tab that was left open overnight.

Something to keep in mind is that if the page a user is trying to access during a forced logout requires they be logged into a permissioned Esri Community account to see (for instance, a post on a Private User Group their account belongs to) our system will not take them to the intended page and should instead prompt them to log in. Following that login, they'll be able to access pages requiring special permissions their account has.

If you have any questions or find you're having a different experience moving forward, please let us know.

[BlakeMorrison]

Thanks for the speedy fix.

However, I'm having no luck with this change from my end. Something has changed in the sense that now when I click back from the community homepage I've been redirected to, I can see the URL I was redirected to:

https://www.arcgis.com/home/pages/Account/manage_accounts.html#redirect_uri=https://community.esri.c...

[JesseCloutier]

@BlakeMorrison, within the last few days our team worked with another individual who found the update also wasn't working for them at first. It resolved and worked as expected after they cleared their browser's cache. Could you try doing that and let us know if it makes the difference for you?

[BlakeMorrison]

Sorry for slow response. Desired behaviour now works/occurs most of the time. Still a few occasions where I get redirected to the community homepage and have to try again, but most of the time it works.

Thank you.

[BlakeMorrison]

I think this stopped working. Not my problem anymore, I'm gonna unsubscribe from this thread.

[Bud]

I am also seeing the problem still. I'm not able to help with troubleshooting either, as I have moved to a different position.