Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Monitoring and Archiving : Archiving Configuration (part 1) - Creating Site and User Policies

With the Topology Builder tool, most of the configuration is done automatically. Although both configuration and administration can be done from the Silverlight web GUI or the Lync Server Management Shell, the configuration section focuses on the former and the administration section on the latter, to avoid duplication of concepts.

Open the Lync Server Control Panel, which can be found at https://<pool_FQDN>/Cscp/. Scroll down in the left bar, and click the Monitoring and Archiving button. This brings up the settings menus for the Monitoring and Achiving server roles. Because Call Detail Recording and Quality of Experience Data are Monitoring functions, skip directly to the Archiving Policy tab. Here, you see the default Global Policy. Select it and click Edit and then Show Details.

These are the available options:

• Name (the name of the policy)

• Description (your own notes to identify the policy)

• Archive Internal Communications check box

• Archive External Communications check box

Now move to the Archiving Configuration tab. Again, you see the default Global Policy. Select it and click Edit and then Show Details. The available options are as listed here:

• Name (the name of the policy)

• Archiving settings, including three options in the drop-down list:

• Disable Archiving

• Archive IM Sessions

• Archive IM and Web Conferencing Sessions

• Block Instant Messaging (IM) or Web Conferencing Sessions If Archiving Fails check box

• Enable Purging of Archiving Data check box

If purging is enabled, there are two radio button options:

• Purge Exported Archiving Data and Stored Archiving Data After Maximum Duration (Days)

• Purge Exported Archiving Data Only

If the “Days” option is selected, the administrator has the option to define how many days the archived data is stored.

1. Creating Site and User Policies

In addition to modifying the default Global policy, administrators can create additional policies. To create a site policy, follow these steps:

1. From the Monitoring and Archiving window, click the Archiving Policy tab and click New.

2. Choose either Site Policy or User Policy.

A site policy can be associated with specific sites to allow their behaviors to be different from the default global policy. User policies are assigned directly to users and allow them to bypass the default global policy. This is useful when archiving is needed only for select users who are distributed across the environment.

3. For this example, choose a Site Policy. When prompted to select a site, choose it from the list and click OK.

4. Now, the policy is named after the site—this cannot be modified. Input a description and choose whether internal and external communications will be archived. Click Commit.

Administrators can also create user policies that can be assigned to individual users instead of at a site level. To create a user policy, follow these steps:

1. For a user policy, repeat steps 1 and 2 but choose User Policy.

2. Enter a name for the user policy.

3. Enter a description for the policy.

4. Choose whether internal and external communications will be archived. Click Commit.

This results in the creation of multiple policies that can be used to manage archiving.

To apply a user-based Archiving Policy to a user, perform the following steps:

1. From the Lync Server 2013 Control Panel, click Users in the left pane.

2. Click Find in the search area to view the list of enabled users.

3. Double-click the user you want to modify.

4. Scroll down to Archiving Policy and choose the policy you want to apply from the drop-down list.

For administrators who prefer to do all their configuration tasks through PowerShell, Lync Server 2013 supports the capability to read and modify the archive policy and archive configuration through cmdlets:

Get-CsArchivingConfiguration
Identity                            :Global
EnableArchiving                     :ImAndWebConf
EnablePurging                       :True
PurgeExportedArchivesOnly           :False
BlockOnArchiveFailure               :True
KeepArchivingDataForDays            :120