Administration of the Persistent Chat
environment is largely focused on managing the individual chat rooms.
From the Lync administrator’s perspective, chat room management is
performed using the Lync Server Management Shell. However, management
of chat rooms can also be delegated to responsible users, for example,
department heads or other personnel. Chat room management by end users
is typically handled simply by use of the Lync 2013 client. This
section provides details on some of the more common administrative
tasks that are required to maintain the Persistent Chat environment.
Chat Room Management by Administrators
Although it is possible to configure some chat room parameters when the room is created using the New-CsPersistentChatRoom cmdlet, these same parameters and more can be configured after the chat room is created using the Set-CsPersistentChatRoom cmdlet. Parameters that can be configured using this cmdlet include the following:
• Disabled—Allows the status of the chat room to be disabled or enabled using the $true or $false values.
• Type—Allows a chat
room to be specified as either a normal chat room, which accepts
messages posted by any member, or an auditorium chat room, which allows
only the presenter to post messages that other members can only read.
• Addin—Associates a
previously configured add-in with a chat room, which allows URL content
to be viewed by members while participating.
• Privacy—Allows a
chat room to be configured as Open, Secret, or Closed. Open rooms can
be searched and accessed by anyone. Secret rooms can be searched and
accessed only by members of the room. Closed rooms can be searched by
anyone, but can be accessed only by members. By default, each new room
is initially configured as Closed.
• Invitations—Allows
enabling or disabling of chat room invitations, which are used to
notify users when they have been added as chat room members. The
default setting for invitations is inherit, which causes the chat room
to adopt the invitation setting configured on the category it belongs
to. Configuring the invitations setting to false at the chat room level allows the category setting to be overridden.
• Members—Configures
membership for the chat room. You can add or remove either individual
or multiple members using a single cmdlet by specifying the SIP address
of the users. To allow users to be added in bulk, Active Directory
organizational units or distribution groups can also be specified.
• Managers—Allows
managers to be assigned to the chat room. Managers have the permissions
to define membership of a chat room along with other settings.
• Presenters—Allows presenters to be assigned to an auditorium chat room.
The following command would be used to temporarily disable the chat room:
Set-CsPersistentChatRoom -Identity chatpool1.companyabc.com\Staffing -Disabled $true
The following command would be used to change
the privacy setting to Secret, assign members using a distribution
group, and assign an individual as a manager:
Set-CsPersistentChatRoom -Identity
chatpool1.companyabc.com\Staffing -Privacy secret -members @{Add="CN=HR
Staff,OU=Groups,DC=companyabc,DC=com"} -Managers
@{Add="sip:HRlead@companyabc.com"}
If the command is successful, the updated parameters for the chat room are listed, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Adjusting chat room parameters using the command line.
You can view the complete syntax of the Set-CsPersistentChatRoom cmdlet along with helpful examples by executing the following command using the Management Shell: Get-Help Set-CsPersistentChatRoom -Detailed. It is also simple to view the parameters for an existing chat room by executing the Get-CsPersistentChatRoom cmdlet, specifying the identity of the room.
After a user has been assigned as a member of a chat room, the room automatically appears in the Lync client.
From here, participation in a room is simply a matter of
double-clicking on one of the listed rooms to view existing chat
messages and adding new messages.
Note
The message history initially presented to
the user when viewing a chat room is based on the Default Chat History
setting configured by the administrator. However, this does not prevent a user from searching the chat
room for additional messages that are maintained within the chat
history for the room.
After chat rooms become available within the
Lync client, the user can configure topic feeds, notifications, and
more.
From time to time, it might be necessary for
a Lync administrator to clear messages from a room, which can be
accomplished with the Clear-CsPersistentChatRoom cmdlet.
The clearing of messages from a room always starts with the oldest
messages, but it is possible to specify an end date to provide a range
of messages to be cleared. For example, the following command would be
used to clear all of the messages from a chat room that are older than
a specific end date:
Clear-CsPersistentChatRoom -Identity chatpool1.companyabc.com\Staffing -EndDate "9/28/2012"
On occasion it might also be necessary for an
administrator to remove individual messages from a chat room, perhaps
because they are deemed inappropriate. This can be accomplished via the
Remove-CsPersistentChatMessage cmdlet. To assist in
finding messages to be removed, multiple keywords can be specified in
the cmdlet as search criteria. For example, the following command would
be used to search the Payroll chat room and remove any messages that
contain both of the words “executive” and “salaries”:
Remove-CsPersistentChatMessage -Identity chatpool1.companyabc.com\Payroll -Filter "executive salaries" -MatchClause And
If one or more matches are found, the removed
messages are replaced with a notification that the message has been
removed by a Persistent Chat administrator, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Chat message removed by an administrator.
Tip
Unless otherwise specified, removed messages are replaced with the default text shown in Figure 2. However, it is also possible to specify different replacement text using the -ReplaceMessage
parameter. Additional parameters are also available, including date
ranges for the search. You can find further details by executing the
following command in the Management Shell: Get-Help Remove-CsPersistentChatMessage -Detailed.
