We recently had a very interesting case. Where the customer had 5 usual licenses for their CRM system. Of which 2 users no matter what they did and how many attempts on logging out, they would still be taking up 2 licenses and staying logged in. it would then follow with saying maximum users are logged in and not allow anyone else to log back in.

Here are some tips on multiple ways to solve this issue that I believe could help someone if they ever come across this.

To see how many active users the CRM System has we can find out by going to Administration > Users > User Activity > Current User tab

Here we can check the active users and also the user activity history, In our particular case we could see these two users were logged in for days. Which led to us realizing that the Time-out setting most likely was not working.

Another easy and great method to see users logged and kick them out is by going to your CRM url and at the end adding /sysadmin

This gives you a detailed log of all logged in users. When you click on the hyperlink of the user it will automatically kick them. Funny enough the client could see all users except the 2 users that had been logged in for days.

So we preformed a system lock so we could force everyone out except the Admin. Then the Admin can unlock the system and everyone could log back in.

Locking the system

This option provides a way to log all users except the System Administrator out of the system when essential maintenance tasks need to be carried out.

Before implementing a lockdown of the system, you should inform all users who might be affected of when the process will be initiated. When the locking process is complete, users still trying to interact with the system will discover that they have been logged out when they attempt to click a button that sends information to the server. Well-flagged notifications about temporary lockdowns of the system should stop users from losing data being entered through the interface. 

Users cannot log back into the system until you unlock it or the maximum lockout period of three hours has elapsed. 

The only user who can release the lock on the system is the System Administrator who set the lock. If you have more than one user with Administration rights, they are locked out too.

1. Click <My Profile> | Administration | System | Lock System. The system can be locked when the icon displays as a closed padlock. The Lock System page is displayed, listing the number of users currently logged on. Ideally, there should be no users logged on if the System Administrator has provided sufficient notification of the process.
2. Click Continueto log off any logged on users.
3. Click Continueto lock the system.

Unlocking the system

1. Click <My Profile> | Administration | System| Unlock System. The system can be unlocked when the icon is displayed as an open padlock.
2. Click Continue.
3. Click Continue. The systemis unlocked and users can log on. 

In my testing this method worked for me. However the client did not have any success with it.

We checked the Time-out settings controlled from both CRM and from Internet Information Server (IIS). 

You can check in your Application pools to see if it is matching the following default settings for a CRM setup.

1. Open the IIS Manager
2. Expand the Application Pools Section
3. Right click on the CRM App Pool
4. Click on Advanced Settings
5. Scroll to the Process Models Section
6. Set Idle Time-Out (minutes) to 120
7. Repeat step 3-6 for the Default AppPool, CRMRewriter App Pool, and Classic .NET AppPool
8. Reset IIS 

This helped the client with all existing users except the 2 users still logged in. So we threw one last hail mary and We noticed that the system had not set a logout time for these two users on the database end and it was empty. We manually set a time for this and the user was logged out and did not appear under current users. 

In our learnings we found that the obvious choices to solving the issue where not the initial solution but they led us down the right track to solve the issue. I hope these 3 methods will help you solve this issue should you come across it in the future.