In this article
Global Navigation Icon
The Global Navigation icon in the main toolbar is common to the majority of Forsta's applications. Click the icon to open a selection overlay - providing access to all the other Forsta Plus applications that you are licensed to use, and to the Homepage (go to Homepage for more information). If you are logged in to and you wish to change to a different application, click the Global Navigation icon and select the appropriate application. The current application is underlined and is also named in the toolbar. Note that if you are not licensed to use an application, its icon will not be displayed in the overlay.
Figure 1 - The Global Navigation Icon
The application selection overlay
Icons with an “arrow” beside the product name open Authoring or Reportal, icons without the arrow take you directly to the selected application. Refer to the separate documentation for further information on the various applications.
The button beside the Global Navigation icon is always available while you are in , and returns you directly to the Surveys list (go to Surveys List Overview for more information).
User Menu
Towards the right end of the toolbar is located the User Menu button. This button opens a menu enabling you to access your user settings (go to User Settings for more information), and to log out from Forsta Plus.
Figure 2 - The User Menu button and menu
Browser Back Button
The Back button in your browser saves the history of your movement through Survey Designer for the current session. This means that if you wish you can go directly back to a page, for example a particular question, that you were working with earlier.
To open the history overlay, either right-click on the browser Back button or place the pointer onto the Back button then click and hold the left mouse button.
Figure 3 - Accessing the history list
Click on the desired page to go directly to that page,
Links to SmartHub
When a survey belongs to exactly one hub, that hub is shown at the top of the survey page (ringed below). If you have access permission to that hub then it will be a clickable link that takes you straight into that hub.
Figure 4 - Example of a clickable link to the SmartHub associated with the survey
Combined with the features that allow you to create a survey in Survey Designer from SmartHub.
Timeout
Whenever a user (not a respondent) logs on to the application, a new session object is created on the server. This object holds information about the author’s state (current survey, etc), and the Web server allocates memory for this state information. By maintaining this information as you move from page to page within Forsta Plus, the individual requests to the server are kept small and simple. However, the Web server does not want to keep track of this information when you exit the Web application, and it is possible to exit the application without explicitly sending a ’log off’ command to the Web server.
Therefore for security reasons, if the time between author-requests exceeds 60 minutes (perhaps you have gone to a meeting and left Forsta Plus running), an automatic time-out occurs. At this stage the login overlay is displayed on your monitor in front of the Forsta Plus window. If you now re-enter your password (your username will be remembered), you can continue the session where you left off.
However once the login overlay time-out is reached (after a further 180 minutes), Forsta assumes you have logged off and frees the memory holding the state information. This is then lost, so if you log back in after the time-out you will be redirected to the first page of the Web application.
Figure 5 - The login overlay that is displayed when a session has timed-out due to inactivity
Note: If you have made some changes in your survey and the login overlay appears before you have the chance to save them, then all is not lost. If you log again in before you are locked out, Forsta will reopen at the page you were last in and will remember the changes, allowing you to continue where you left off (and save your changes at your earliest opportunity!).