Conferencing Policy

Part of enabling user accounts for dial-in conferencing is assigning a conferencing policy the enables the PSTN dial-in capability. Conferencing settings apply to more than only dial-in conferencing. However, the settings required to use PSTN dial-in conferencing are controlled through a conferencing policy. These settings are the following:

• Allow participants to invite anonymous users—Controls whether anonymous, unauthenticated users from outside the organization can participate in conferences. Although this setting is not required to be enabled, if it is not selected, it limits the use of audio conferencing to only users inside the organization.

• Enable PSTN dial-in conferencing—This setting must be enabled for dial-in conferencing to function. It controls whether dial-in conferencing is allowed.

• Allow anonymous participants to dial out—Controls whether anonymous, unauthenticated users from outside the organization can join an audio conference and be called at a PSTN number by the conferencing service. Users may still dial in to the conferencing service if this option is not selected, but might not request to be called at another number.

To verify these settings are configured correctly, perform the following steps:

1. Open the Lync Server 2010 Control Panel.

2. Click Conferencing.

3. Click Conferencing Policy.

4. Highlight an existing conferencing policy, click Edit, and select Show details.

5. Verify the Allow participants to invite anonymous users option is set.

6. Verify the Enable PSTN dial-in conferencing option is set.

7. Verify the Allow anonymous users to dial out option is set.

8. Click Commit. Figure 19.3 shows a sample conferencing policy that allows all these features.

Figure 19.3 Conferencing Policy Allowing Dial-In Conferencing

• The Lync Server Management Shell can also be used to configure these settings. The example here modifies the Global setting for conferencing:

Set-CsConferencingPolicy Global –EnableDialInConferencing <$True | $False>
–AllowAnonymousUsersToDialOut <$True | $False> -AllowAnonymousParticipantsInMeetings
<$True | $False>