Understanding Session Lifecycle

Lockfy records a session as a sequence of state transitions. Understanding this model makes the rest of the portal easier to interpret, especially the session details, idle history, and lock history pages.

This lifecycle is also influenced by the configured workstation lock policy. For policy-specific behavior, see Lock Policies List.

Session Lifecycle Events

Lockfy tracks the following event types:

Session Start: The user signs in and a session begins.
Idle Start: The session becomes idle while still unlocked.
Idle End: The idle period ends because of user activity, a lock event, or sign-out.
Lock Start: The session becomes locked.
Lock End: The lock ends because the user unlocked the session or the session ended.
Session End: The user signs out or the session otherwise terminates.

A visual illustration of the session lifecycle events across time:

			Idle End
Event	Session Start	Idle Start	Lock Start	Lock End	Session End
State	Active	Idle	Locked	Active	Ended

Time Flow →

Repeating Cycles & Incomplete Events

Some events can occur multiple times in the same session. For example, a user can go idle more than once, unlock and relock the same session, or manually lock a workstation before policy enforcement occurs.

When an expected closing event is missing, Lockfy normalizes the timeline so reporting remains consistent. For example, it can infer the end of an idle or lock period when a later event clearly closes that state.

Example 1

A session can move from Active to Locked because a user locks the workstation manually, then move directly to Ended if the device restarts.

Example 2

A session can cycle through Active and Idle multiple times before eventually moving to Locked, depending on user behavior and the applied lock policy.

For record-level investigation, continue to Sessions List or Session Details.