Why are agents getting locked out of the admin console while being logged in and working?

Environment:

Oracle B2C Service, Agent Console versions February 2015 and newer

Issue:

Agents are getting logged out even though they are actively working in the console.  They are receiving a message of "This instance of Oracle B2C Service has been locked due to user inactivity".

Resolution:

Since the February 2015 version, a new configuration setting has been introduced:

SESSION_HARD_TIMEOUT

This setting defines the session hard timeout in hours for the site. The minimum value is 1 hour and the maximum value is 8760 hours (1 year). Default is 12 hours. Warning: Changing to a smaller value can force a hard timeout without notice to logged-in users.

Having a session open for longer than the period specified by this configuration setting WILL cause agents to get logged out even if they are actively working in the console.

In order to change this configuration setting to another value please follow the instructions outlined in answer Answer ID 1960: Editing configuration settings.