Topic Last Modified: 2011-01-18
Public instant messaging (IM) connectivity enables users in your organization to use IM to communicate with users of IM services provided by public IM service providers, including the Windows Live network of Internet services, Yahoo!, and AOL. You configure one or more external user access policies to control whether public users can collaborate with internal Lync Server users. To control public user access, you can configure policies at the global, site, and user level. Site policies override the global policy, and user policies override site and global policies. For details about the types of policies that you can configure, see Manage Communications with External Users in the Deployment documentation or the Planning documentation.
In the case of IM invitations, the response depends on the client software. The request is accepted unless external senders are explicitly blocked by a user-configured rule (that is, the settings in the user’s client Allow and Block lists). Additionally, IM invitations can be blocked if a user elects to block all IM from users who are not on his or her Allow list.
 Note: |
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| You can configure policies to control public user access, even if you have not enabled federation for your organization. However, the policies that you configure are in effect only when you have federation enabled for your organization. For details about enabling federation, see Enable or Disable Federation for Your Organization in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation. Additionally, if you specify a user policy to control public user access, the policy applies only to users that are enabled for Lync Server 2010 and configured to use the policy. For details about specifying public users that can sign in to Lync Server 2010, see Apply External User Access Policies to Users in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation. |
Use the following procedure to configure a policy to support access by users of one or more public IM providers.
To configure an external access
policy to support public user access
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From a user account that is a member of the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group (or has equivalent user rights), or is assigned to the CsAdministrator role, log on to any computer in your internal deployment.
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Open a browser window, and then enter the Admin URL to open the Lync Server Control Panel. For details about the different methods you can use to start Lync Server Control Panel, see Open Lync Server Administrative Tools.
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In the left navigation bar, click External User Access, and then click External Access Policy.
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On the External Access Policy page, do one of the following:
- To configure the global policy to support public user access,
click the global policy, click Edit, and then click Show
details.
- To create a new site policy, click New, and then click
Site policy. In Select a Site, click the appropriate
site from the list and then click OK.
- To create a new user policy, click New, and then click
User policy. In New External Access Policy, create a
unique name in the Name field that indicates what the user
policy covers (for example, EnablePublicUsers for a user
policy that enables communications for public users).
- To change an existing policy, click the appropriate policy
listed in the table, click Edit, and then click Show
details.
- To configure the global policy to support public user access,
click the global policy, click Edit, and then click Show
details.
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(Optional) If you want to add or edit a description, specify the information for the policy in Description.
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Do one of the following:
- To enable public user access for the policy, select the
Enable communications with public users check box.
- To disable public user access for the policy, clear the
Enable communications with public users check box.
- To enable public user access for the policy, select the
Enable communications with public users check box.
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Click Commit.
To enable public user access, you must also enable support for federation in your organization. For details, see Enable or Disable Federation for Your Organization in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation.
If this is a user policy, you must also apply the policy to public users that you want to be able to collaborate with public users. For details, see Apply External User Access Policies to Users in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation.