Overview of Persistent Chat Server in Lync Server 2013

 

Topic Last Modified: 2012-10-29

Lync Server 2013, Persistent Chat Server enables users to participate in multiparty, topic-based conversations that persist over time. Persistent Chat Server can help your organization do the following:

  • Improve communication between geographically dispersed and cross-functional teams. By using Persistent Chat, teams can efficiently share information, ideas, and decisions with one another. The messages posted to chat rooms (discussion forums) can persist (that is, can be available over time), so that people from different locations and departments can participate, even when they are not simultaneously online. When a user connects to a chat room, backchat (a configurable number of chat-history messages) is automatically loaded in the chat room to give the user a context for the conversation.

  • Improve information awareness. By using client-side filters, users can define conditions—such as keywords in message content, or the value of the "from" field in a message—to receive notification when those conditions are met in Persistent Chat instant messages or chat room messages. This way, users can stay up-to-date with the content that interests them most.

  • Improve communication with their extended organization. By making it easy to collaborate over long-running topics with others in the organization, and by providing a persistent place to share information, Persistent Chat helps improve communication.

  • Reduce information overload. Users can follow chat rooms and messages of most interest by using client-side filters, and can add chat rooms they want to follow to their contact list.

  • Increase dispersion of important knowledge and information. Documents and links can be included within conversations for access by all the team. By posting questions to a broader team, users can benefit from responses by subject matter experts. Integration with other information systems enables important organizational data to be easily communicated to large groups.

To enable chat rooms in Lync Server 2013, deploy Lync Server 2013 Persistent Chat. For information about enabling chat rooms, see the Persistent Chat Help at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=270945. If users are enabled for Lync Server, and Lync Server support is deployed, users can install and use Lync 2013 Persistent Chat to provide chat room support.

If your organization is required to follow compliance regulations, you can optionally deploy Persistent Chat Compliance service.