How to go about keeping users logged into Spark?

We’re a company of 150+ employees spanning several sites and cities and looking to address a “communication issue” in that users have discovered they can hide from our management team by exiting or logging out of Spark.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to find a way to modify Spark to keep this from happening, or a solution outside of Spark to meet these needs but have come up empty handed thus far.

I was hoping someone hear would have a solution or could point me in the right direction to find some answers. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Yep, but you’ll need to compile your own custom version.

See this line in the default config: https://github.com/igniterealtime/Spark/blob/master/src/java/org/jivesoftware/re source/default.properties#L86

Make that line have “true” as the value, and compile Spark (there’s guides here on the forums). While you’re at it, you could add some custom company branding/logos to make Spark look more “native” to your business … that file has a lot of customizability options.

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Excellent. Will disabling the Exit feature also disable the Log-out option as well? And if not, is there anywhere to modify that option or the menu bar to hide that?

Actually, by setting that value to “true”, it removes the “logout” and “exit” buttons from the drop-down menu as well as from the system tray. So nobody will be able to logout, or exit Spark.

Also, when in this mode, using the Task Manager to “End Task” simply closes the Spark window, but leaves it running in the background (so a new message will cause the blinking taskbar again, etc…). Note that, using the “End Process” option under Processes tab in Task Manager will indeed still exit Spark. I don’t think the OS would allow that call to be ignored, although i could be wrong and maybe there’s a way to catch and ignore that OS signal…

So now, if you set a default server/host name and make it not changeable (in the same default.properties file):

https://github.com/igniterealtime/Spark/blob/master/src/java/org/jivesoftware/re source/default.properties#L28

Force Spark to start on computer boot:

https://github.com/igniterealtime/Spark/blob/5bd0f0eb44a4ffe1f4afd1c5d548aca0a89 1de67/src/java/org/jivesoftware/sparkimpl/settings/local/LocalPreferences.java# L 658

( ^ change “false” to “true”)

And then ask everyone to checkbox the “Auto Login” on their first Spark Login (part of the login menu), this will make it very difficult for anyone to close/crash/exit/logout of spark, unless they turn their computer off :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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