Sybex Testbanks and session timeout

[Ben Pittens]

Hello,

Little complain about the Sybex Testbank:

I started this morning at 8.30u CET with Practice test 2. Test 2 was finished by me at 10.15u CET. After the test I evaluated my result.
Then I started to view the answers one by one with the "next question button", untill I had viewed all the answers at 12.15u CET.

After that I clicked the "Result screen" button again and the Sybex site give me the message "Session timed out".

So I had to log back in again, but all my answers where lost. That is a little troublesome.

It happens a couple of time if you are in the questions that if you go back to the review screen that you ar thrown out.

What are the triggers for a timed out session?


Kind Regards
Ben

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Ben,
I don't know what the timeout is. Can you report the problem to Wiley Customer Help? That way Wiley can let the folks who created the website know.

Thanks,
Jeanne

[Roel De Nijs]

Ben Pittens wrote:What are the triggers for a timed out session?

As I didn't know what triggers a session timeout, I did a few tests. Here are the results.

When you are answering questions, you get a window alert after 7 minutes. It mentions your session will expire after 3 minutes. So a session timeout happens after 10 minutes. When you log in again, you can choose to continue with your previous attempt or to start over. When you choose to continue with your previous attempt you can choose to continue from where you left or not.

When you are reviewing questions, it's a little bit different and troublesome. Even after an hour you can still navigate between the questions and the answers. But when you click the "Results Screen" button again after 10 minutes, your session has expired (and you are logged out automatically). When you log in again, your previous attempt is completely gone and thus all your answers are lost. So I think this should definitely be improved. It would be nice if you have a history of 3 (or 5) attempts, so you can review the questions whenever you want. And once you are done with an attempt, you simply click the recycle bin icon to garbage collect this attempt.

Hope it helps!
Kind regards,
Roel

[Roel De Nijs]

Hi Ben,

Any follow-up on this issue? Did you contact Wiley Customer Help? And did you get any response from them?

Kind regards,
Roel

[Roel De Nijs]

Roel De Nijs wrote:Any follow-up on this issue? Did you contact Wiley Customer Help? And did you get any response from them?

I contacted Wiley Customer Support myself using their Live Chat function. I explained the issue (mainly repeating what is mentioned in one of my previous posts).

And here's the response

Wiley Customer Support wrote:I understand, I do apologize for the inconvenience this is causing you, I will escalate this issue to our tier 2 for further troubleshooting, someone from tier 2 will contact you via email with a solution to this issue

Once I'm contacted, I'll post the proposed solution here as well.

[Roel De Nijs]

Roel De Nijs wrote:Once I'm contacted, I'll post the proposed solution here as well.

I was contacted by Wiley Technical Support with a resolution for this issue.

Wiley Technical Support wrote:Thank you for contacting Wiley Technical Support.

We have fixed the issue with the Sybex Testbank website. I have tested the registrations and confirmed they are working. You should now be able to complete the registration process. If you need further assistance please reply to this email to update your support ticket.

Wiley Technical Support

Unfortunately the resolution is completely unrelated with the actual issue and therefore absolutely useless. I coontacted them again, explained what was going on and reported the same issue again. They will contact me (again) once they have a resolution for the issue. Keep you posted!

[Roel De Nijs]

After 6 months of no response, I contacted Wiley Technical Support again (after another complaint).

A short summary of my chat

Wiley Customer Service wrote:Wiley still employs that 10 minute session time out if no activity occurs on the page.

Wiley Customer Service wrote:Would you like to speak to someone else who may be able to further explain why Wiley designs their websites and webpages in that manner?

Me wrote:so if I understand correctly, this issue will never be fixed as it is a feature by design

Wiley Customer Service wrote:Fixed? i cannot say. Changed...who knows, perhaps.

Me wrote:and what needs to be done to file a change request for this annoying behavior?

Then the chat continued with another person. And he also didn't seem to understand how annoying this 10 minute session time-out is when you take a 90-120 minutes during mock exam followed by carefully reviewing the answers and explanations. And that you don't want to lose all your answers before knowing if these answers were correct/incorrect and why. Because that makes the mock tests pretty useless as it is really key for a mock exam to be able to review your answer(s) and learn from your mistakes. And that resulted in

Wiley Customer Service wrote:Understood, I can send all of this up the ladder and let you know what I hear back.

Once I'm contacted (might be a day or two), I'll post the response here as well.

[Julian West]

I have the same problem.

I am not creating another account just to file a support ticket that will go nowhere useful.

They gave a test bank site a financial bank site's timeout!  ba-dum-dum-tsssssshhhhh!

I wonder if an auto-refresh extension would circumvent that...I'll update when I get to it.

[Roel De Nijs]

I got the following response

Wiley Customer Service wrote:Roel, I heard back from the product manager.  The 10 minute timeout is intended, but should only occur during inactivity.  He did mention that it is unlikely to be changed, as we are migrating all of our new titles to a different testbank platform.

I have sent this reply

Me wrote:It's really a pity that Wiley doesn't consider feedback of their readers to improve the usability of their products. As already mentioned a few times this 10 minute timeout makes the tests pretty useless (if you click the wrong button). And probably this 10 minute timeout is decided by someone who has never taken a certification (mock) exam.
If you have answered a question incorrectly, you'll probably read the explanation very carefully, you might write a few code snippets to get a better unstanding, you might create a new topic on a certification forum to clear your doubts,... And 10 minutes will be gone before you know it!

[Julian West]

That and a mock exam will most likely take 2-5 hours and the review another hour or two.

Timing out on the exam is frustrating and reeks of low quality but it isn't a dealbreaker as it resumes where the user left off; however, the review--the whole point of the mock exam--doesn't and gets lost forever.  This is a dealbreaker.

I don't know about other users but I'm going to assume that after a 2-5-hour exam, a <10-minute break isn't sufficient.  

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Roel De Nijs wrote:I got the following response

Wiley Customer Service wrote:Roel, I heard back from the product manager.  The 10 minute timeout is intended, but should only occur during inactivity.  He did mention that it is unlikely to be changed, as we are migrating all of our new titles to a different testbank platform.

Again? Our book was one of the first books on the current platform! (Which is good because the previous platform was horrible - you could only see a few lines on the screen without scrolling)

[Elana Abelev]

It happened to me today and is very frustrating.  Finished the test, then went to make myself some tea to refresh my attention before going through the wrong answers and looking up topics...  I come back to find the session timed out.  Not a problem usually, because in all of online exams I have taken before the answers were saved and one could come back and review the test any time.  Not this test though!  All of my answers were gone.  Had to take the test again, then review the questions right away.  Very frustrated.  

The answers are saved only as long as the test is not complete.  So for anyone planning to take a break between finishing the mock exam and reviewing it - better take your break after question 59, because if you take too long of a break after question 60, you'll be doing the test over.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Elena,
I agree that's annoying. I encourage you to create a ticket on Wiley's support site. If they hear from more customers, maybe something will change.

[Elana Abelev]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Elena,
I agree that's annoying. I encourage you to create a ticket on Wiley's support site. If they hear from more customers, maybe something will change.

Will definitely do!

[Viktor Logwin]

A feature request case opened on Wiley Hub:

Hello,
I'm using the Sybex test bank as supporting feature, coming with the book "OCP: Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 8 Programmer II Study Guide: Exam 1Z0-809".
After a session timeout, the website behaves as it should: you can resume the last attempt from where you leaved it.
But this feature doesn't work in the review phase, where the test has been completed and you can review the questions and correct answers. In this case after loosing the session because of timeout, the review of the attempt is not possible! The home page is loaded on returning.
Please add the same checkpoint for the review phase, as you have for the test taking phase.
The problem has also been reported in coderanch.com by other users of the test bank.

Will report on updates.

[Viktor Logwin]

They asked me to provide images. Don't know, of what.
I have listed the detailed steps to reproduce the issue.
Will see.

[Julian West]

This issue isn't limited to this book; it's Wiley's whole setup.

In deciding whether to spend the extra $100 for the online component to her college book, my wife looked at reviews and asked around about it and decided against it because of usability issues like these.

[Viktor Logwin]

My request has been closed today. Here is the answer:

Our product specialist advises:
That is correct behavior.  The timeout is intended to keep a user from losing any entered answers.  Once a test is reviewed, it is over and the intent is the user would take another practice test to study.

I will close this ticket as a "Voice of Customer" - request for changes to be made. I cannot advise if and / or when this may be done. But I assure you I will put in the request for you.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Thanks Viktor. At least they are hearing about it.