Chat Room Add-ins
Chat room add-ins are used to extend the
Persistent Chat user experience by associating customized websites with
chat rooms. When add-ins are registered by the Lync administrator and
associated with chat rooms, the content of the specified websites is
embedded in the conversation extensibility pane of the Lync 2013
client. A good example of how an add-in might be
used would be embedding a Microsoft OneNote URL within a chat room
dedicated to a particular department, where the site provides
information that would be of interest to the department members.
The following steps would be used to create a chat room add-in:
1. Log on to a system where the Lync administrative tools are installed using an account that is a member of the CsAdministrator or CsPersistentChatAdministrator security groups, and open the Lync Server Control Panel.
2. In the left pane, select Persistent Chat, and then click the Add-in tab at the top.
3. Click New; then, at
the Select a Service dialog box, select the Persistent Chat pool that
will be associated with this add-in, and click OK.
4. At the New Add-in
screen, enter a name for the add-in, enter the URL that will be
associated with the add-in, and then click Commit to save the
configuration.
After an add-in has been registered, it is
associated with a chat room using the Lync Server Management Shell. The
following procedure would be used to associate an add-in named
Engineering Design Add-in with the Engineering chat room shown earlier
in Figure 3:
1. Log on to a system where the Lync administrative tools are installed using an account that is a member of the CsAdministrator or CsPersistentChatAdministrator group and the RTC Local Administrators group on the Persistent Chat Server, and that has administrative rights on the local system.
2. Open the Lync Server Management Shell, and execute the following cmdlet:
Set-CsPersistentChatRoom -Identity chatpool1.companyabc.com -Add-in Engineering Design Add-in
Chat Rooms
After categories have been created,
chat rooms can be created within those categories, and they will
inherit the options that have been configured at the category level.
Chat rooms can be created either by a Persistent Chat administrator, or
by another user who has been assigned as a creator for one or more
categories. Unlike the other Persistent Chat configuration tasks
described previously, the creation and configuration of chat rooms is
not performed using the Lync Server Control Panel. There are two ways
to create a chat room: using the Lync Server Management Shell, or using
the Lync 2013 client. Both methods are described next.
Creating a Chat Room Using the Lync Server Management Shell
The first method that can be used to create a
chat room is using the Lync Server Management Shell, which would
typically be used by Lync administrators or other IT personnel who have
been delegated administrative permissions to the Persistent Chat
deployment. To execute Persistent Chat PowerShell cmdlets remotely, a
user must be a member of the CsAdministrator or CsPersistentChatAdministrator groups, must be explicitly
listed as a member of the RTC Local Administrators group on the
Persistent Chat Server, and must also have local administrative rights
on the system where the Management Shell is used.
Following is the procedure for using the Lync Server Management Shell to create one of the chat rooms shown earlier in Figure 10.9:
1. Log on to a system where the Lync administrative tools are installed using an account that is a member of the CsAdministrator or CsPersistentChatAdministrator
groups in AD, and the RTC Local Administrators group on the Persistent
Chat Server, and has administrative rights on the local system.
2. Open the Lync
Server Management Shell, and execute the following cmdlet to create a
chat room named Design within the Engineering category:
New-CsPersistentChatRoom -Name Design
-PersistentChatPoolFqdn chatpool1.companyabc.com -Category
chatpool1.companyabc.com\Engineering.
3. If the command is successful, the chat room is created and the properties of the new chat room are displayed, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Creating a chat room using the Management Shell.
Note from Figure 5
that when the room is initially created, there is no membership.
Additional commands can then be used to configure various properties of
the room, including room type, membership, managers, and more.
Creating a Chat Room Using the Lync 2013 Client
The second method that can be used to create
a chat room is using the Lync 2013 client, which would typically be
used by a user who has been assigned creator permissions to one or more
categories. To create a chat room using the Lync 2013 client, a user
must first be enabled for Persistent Chat via a Persistent Chat policy,
in addition to being assigned as a creator.
Following is the procedure for using the Lync 2013 client to create one of the chat rooms shown earlier in Figure 3:
1. Log on to the Lync
2013 client using an account that has been enabled for Persistent Chat,
and has been assigned as a creator in a Persistent Chat category.
2. If the user has
been enabled for Persistent Chat, the Chat Rooms icon automatically
appears as the second icon from the left, as shown in Figure 6. Click on the Chat Rooms icon to display the Chat Rooms section of the Lync client.
Figure 6. Chat Rooms section of the Lync 2013 client.
3. On the right side
of the window, click on the plus symbol, and then from the list of
options that appears, click Create a Chat Room.
4. At the prompt, enter the credentials of the user with creator rights.
5. The My Rooms page now displays. Click on Create a New Room.
6. The Create a Room page now appears, as shown in Figure 7. Begin by entering a name, and optionally a description for the new chat room.
Figure 7. Creating a chat room using the Lync 2013 client.
7. Additional properties that can be configured when the chat room is created include the following:
• Privacy—Select
Open, Closed, or Secret. Open rooms can be searched and accessed by
anyone. Closed rooms can be searched by anyone, but can be accessed
only by members. Secret rooms can be searched and accessed only by
members of the room.
• Add-in—Use the
drop-down menu to associate an add-in with the chat room, which allows
URL content to be viewed by members while participating. Add-ins must
be previously approved by a Persistent Chat administrator in order to
appear in this list.
• Managers—The
creator of the chat room is listed by default as the initial chat room
manager; however, this can be changed as needed. If a different user
will be assigned as the manager, or if additional chat room managers
will be assigned, enter one or more names within the Managers box, with
multiple names separated by a semicolon. The check mark icon at the
right of the Managers box can be used to verify the accuracy of the
manager names entered.
• Members—If the chat
room privacy setting is configured as Closed or Secret, individual
names can be entered within the Members box, with multiple names
separated by a semicolon. The check mark icon at the right of the
Members box can be used to verify the accuracy of the member names
entered.
• Invitations—If
the chat room privacy setting is configured as Closed or Secret, the
invitations setting can be configured to either inherit the invitation
setting from the parent category, or disable invitations for the chat
room. Invitations are used to notify users when they have been added as
chat room members.
8. When finished, click Create to create the new chat room.
Compliance Configuration
Persistent Chat compliance allows Lync
administrators to maintain an archive of Persistent Chat messages as
well as activities. For example, the activities that can be recorded
and archived through compliance include new messages, new events such
as a user entering a chat room, and searches that are performed against
chat history. The compliance information can then be retrieved from the
Compliance SQL database as needed.
After the Persistent Chat compliance feature
has been enabled using the Topology Builder, it can then be configured
using the Lync Server Management Shell. The cmdlet used to configure
Persistent Chat compliance is Set-CsPersistentChatComplianceConfiguration. The parameters that can be set using this command include the following:
• AdapterType—An
adapter is a third-party product that converts the data in the
compliance database to a specific format. Adapter types include Akonix,
Assentor, Facetime, and XML (the default).
• OneChatRoomPerOutputFile—This parameter allows separate reports to be created for each chat room.
• AddChatRoomDetails—When
enabled, this records additional details about each chat room in the
database. This setting can greatly increase the size of the database,
and therefore is disabled by default.
• AddUserDetails—When
enabled, this records additional details about each chat room user in
the database. This setting can greatly increase the size of the
database, and therefore is disabled by default.
• RunInterval—This
parameter dictates the amount of time before the server outputs the
next compliance output file (the default is 15 minutes).
• Identity—This
setting allows compliance settings to be scoped for a particular
collection, including the global, site, and service levels. If no
identity is specified, the settings will apply to the global collection.
Additional parameters are also available and you can view them by executing the following command in the Management Shell:
Get-Help Set-CsPersistentChatComplianceConfiguration -Detailed
The following example
sets the compliance properties for the global collection, specifying
that separate reports be created for each chat room, and reducing the
run interval to 10 minutes:
Set-CsPersistentChatComplianceConfiguration -OneChatRoomPerOutputFile $true -RunInterval 00:10:00
