Chat Room Management by Administrators

The basic procedure for creating a chat room using the Lync Server Management Shell was covered earlier in the “Configuring Persistent Chat” section. 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.

Using one of the sample chat rooms shown earlier in Figure 10.9, the following command would be used to temporarily disable the chat room:

Set-CsPersistentChatRoom -Identity chatpool1.companyabc.comStaffing -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.comStaffing -Privacy secret -members @{Add="CN=HR Staff,OU=Groups,DC=companyabc,DC=com"} -Managers @{Add="sip:[email protected]"}

If the command is successful, the updated parameters for the chat room are listed, as shown in Figure 10.14.

Figure 10.14. 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, as shown in Figure 10.12. 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.

After chat rooms become available within the Lync client, the user can configure topic feeds, notifications, and more. For details on the client-side aspects of Persistent Chat, see Chapter 25, “Windows Client.”

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.comStaffing -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.comPayroll -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 10.15.

Figure 10.15. Chat message removed by an administrator.