Enable or Disable Remote User Access for Your Organization

Topic Last Modified: 2011-01-27

Remote users are users in your organization who have a persistent Active Directory identity within the organization. Remote users often sign in to Lync Server your network from outside the firewall by using a virtual private network (VPN) when they are not connected internally to your organization’s network. Remote users include employees working at home or on the road and other remote workers, such as trusted vendors, who have been granted enterprise credentials. If you enable remote user access for remote users, supported remote users do not have to connect using a VPN in order to collaborate with internal users using Lync Server 2010.

To support remote user access, you must enable it. When you enable it, you enable it for your entire organization. If you later want to temporarily or permanently prevent remote user access, you can disable it for your organization. Use the procedure in this section to enable or disable remote user access for your organization.

Note:
Enabling remote user access only specifies that your servers running the Access Edge service support communications with remote users, but remote users cannot participate in instant messaging (IM) or conferences in your organization until you also configure at least one policy to manage the use of remote user access. For details about configuring policies for the use of remote user access, see Manage Remote User Access in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation.

Note:

Enabling remote user access only specifies that your servers running the Access Edge service support communications with remote users, but remote users cannot participate in instant messaging (IM) or conferences in your organization until you also configure at least one policy to manage the use of remote user access. For details about configuring policies for the use of remote user access, see Manage Remote User Access in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation.

To enable or disable remote user access for your organization

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.
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.
In the left navigation bar, click External User Access, and then click Access Edge Configuration.
On the Access Edge Configuration page, click Global, click Edit, and then click Show details.
In Edit Access Edge Configuration, do one of the following:
- To enable remote user access for your organization, select the Enable remote user access check box.
- To disable remote user access for your organization, clear the Enable remote user access check box.
Click Commit.

To enable remote users to sign in to your servers running Lync Server 2010, you must also configure at least one external access policy to support remote user access. For details, see Manage Remote User Access in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation.