---
alias: operation-guide-security-portal-config-impact-mes-operations
description: "Enabling the Security Portal alters MES operation, requiring PINs and impacting locking behavior"
---

# Impact on MES Operations

Upon enabling the Security Portal in a Critical Manufacturing MES instance, several differences will be noticed and should be understood in order to ensure proper functioning of the application:

- Users will require to have a PIN individually set to unlock the application if it has been locked either manually or through a timeout. To set the PIN, go to the [[user-guide-security-users]] section of the User Guide. This configuration can be checked in the [[user-guide-configuration-index]] section of the User Guide, under the `/Cmf/Guis/Configuration/Common/Security` key.
- The PIN cannot be used to login or sign checklists if it is older than a certain number of days. This is configurable in `/Cmf/System/Configuration/security-portal/PINExpirationDays/`. For more information, see the [[system-configuration-entries]] page under `/Cmf/System/Configuration/SecurityPortal`.

    !!! note
	      If the PIN has expired, an error message will appear.

- If **Checklist** items of type *Signature* are created, the **User** that will sign the Checklist item must have a PIN defined.
- Locking and unlocking the Critical Manufacturing MES GUI is not possible in environments that use Security Portal.
- The AutoLockMode configuration entry (for more information, see the [[user-guide-configuration-index]] section of the User Guide) the default setting is `LogOff`.

!!! warning
	  The AutoLockMode configuration setting should not be changed in environments that use Security Portal since the behavior of the application could prove unreliable.