The user session is no more than the session associated with the web-application deployed in the ROOT context, namely the portal implementation. The portlet session is backed by a servlet session associated to the web-application corresponding to the deployed WAR.

So, I attempted to fix this issue by creating an action URL (PortletResponse.createActionURL) and then invoke it every time portlet's corresponding "lastAccessTime" is touched. But because every action request will trigger a render in all portlets this solution is not viable.

The solution might be to just monitor the portal session and when is about to expire invoke an action URL that would force a page refresh and consequently update the "lastAccessTime" time of the portal session (== ROOT context). The good thing is that the implementation could be isolated just to the MainPortlet class.

Assigning to Deryk and targetting for 2.0 when we can look at using the new Portlet 2.0 spec for better async support.

General and proper portlet support for ICEfaces 2.0 falls under the parent issue of the JSF Portlet Bridge.

Assign to Neil for consideration as part of the PortletFaces Bridge integration work.

ICEfaces 2.0 uses the JSF 2.0 standard mechanism for submitting Ajax requests using the jsf.js JavaScript library. The PortletFaces bridge has a method named ExternalContext.encodeResourceURL that will generate a Portlet 2.0 javax.portlet.ResourceRequest which is the Portlet 2.0 way of doing Ajax. We won't be generating ActionRequest, but ResourceRequest, but I think this issue should be closed anyway as the spirit of the goal has been reached.