Enabling Public IM Connectivity (PIC)

Lync Server public IM connectivity (PIC) enables users to communicate with public instant messaging (IM) networks such as MSN, AOL, and Skype. It operates in a similar fashion to federation in that it uses the same ports and topology, but it has a slightly different set of steps to configure. The main difference is that public IM connectivity must be configured through the organization’s licensing site with Microsoft. The public IM providers do not use the SRV record for open federation and instead require these manual steps to provision the initial connectivity.

Administrators can choose to allow only specific SIP domains to communicate with the public IM providers, and each SIP domain supported for public IM connectivity must be provisioned through the licensing site. After the public IM connectivity is provisioned, it can take up to 30 days before each provider activates the change, and because providers are independent, they can come online at different times.

Public IM connections have a more limited feature set than federation does. The Public IM providers do not support any kind of multiparty IM or conferencing, so all conversations are limited to a maximum of two participants. AOL does not support any audio or video modalities with Lync so conversations with AOL contacts can only include instant messaging.

Public IM providers also do not support any kind of web conferencing or A/V features, even on a two-party basis. The only exceptions to this are the MSN and Windows Live services that actually do allow two-party A/V conversations with Lync Server users. MSN allows for two-party audio and video conversations, and Skype will initially allow for two-party audio calls. In both cases, a Lync administrator must remove the default setting of requiring encryption for all calls because MSN and Skype A/V calls cannot use encryption with Lync users.

When discussing public IM connectivity, organizations should do the following:

• Identify whether public IM connectivity to any networks is a business requirement.

• Plan to enable PIC within remote access policies only for users that require these features.

• Submit the PIC provisioning form early on in the deployment process due to the variable lead time for services to be enabled.