• Article

Archiving Communicator Web Access Instant Messages

Topic Last Modified: 2009-03-06

In many organizations, it is mandatory to archive all electronic communications, including instant messaging (IM) sessions. With Office Communications Server, you can record and save IM sessions by installing Archiving Serving, including IM sessions conducted using Communicator Web Access. After you install Archiving Server, you must configure it at both the forest level and the pool/server level before you can archive IM sessions.

When you configure archiving settings, you have the option of using different settings for internal communications than you use for federated communications. For each of these categories you can choose to:

  • Disable instant message archiving.
  • Archive instant messages for all users.
  • Archive instant messages on a per-user basis.

If you decide to enabling archiving on a per-user basis, you need to configure the user accounts for each user whose instant messages you want to archive.

After you configure IM at the forest level, you must enable it at the pool or server level. When you do this, the IM options that you configured at the forest level will be employed by this particular pool or server. If you have multiple pools or servers, you have to configure IM in each one.

By default, instant messages are archived in the database LcsLog. However, the name of the database, and the SQL Server instance where the database resides, can vary depending on how you set up Archiving Server.

To configure instant message archiving at the forest level

  1. Log on to a computer where the Office Communications Server administrative tools have been installed. To configure IM archiving, you must log on as a member of the Domain Admins group and the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group.

  2. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

  3. In the Office Communications Server snap-in, right-click the forest node, point to Properties and then click Global Properties.

  4. In the Office Communications Server Global Properties dialog box, on the Archiving tab, select the desired archiving settings and then click OK.

To configure instant message archiving at the pool or server level

  1. Log on to a computer where the Office Communications Server administrative tools have been installed. To configure IM archiving, you must log on as a member of the Domain Admins group and the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group.

  2. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

  3. In the Office Communications Server snap-in, right-click the pool name or server name, point to Properties and then click Front End Properties.

  4. In the Front End Properties dialog box, click the Archiving tab, and then select Activate IM content archiving. Optionally, you can also select Shut down server if archiving fails to shut down your server if messages cannot be archived.

  5. Click Associate.

  6. In the Associate Back-End Server dialog box, select the appropriate Archiving Server from the Archiving Back-End Server drop-down list and then click OK.

  7. In the Front End Properties dialog box, click OK.