i was thinking about closing a thread, moreso than logging out, but thinking about this further it seems the best way would be to
a.) if operator is inactive >10 minutes, use the 'operator is having connection issues, redirecting back into queue' process
b) if user is inactive for >10 minutes, close_thread();
not sure yet how to accomplish setting an operator to 'Away' mode if globally inactive for >10 minutes, but there should be a way to do this.
the cron job could call a script every x-minutes checking the chat database for certain flags, such as the dtmmodified timestamp.