Topic Last Modified: 2011-01-27

You configure one or more external user access policies to control whether remote users can collaborate with internal Lync Server users. To control remote 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.

Note:
You can configure policies to control remote user access, even if you have not enabled remote user access for your organization. However, the policies that you configure are in effect only when you have remote user access enabled for your organization. For details about enabling remote user access, see Enable or Disable Remote User Access for Your Organization in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation. Additionally, if you specify a user policy to control remote 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 users that can sign in to Lync Server 2010 from remote locations, see Apply External User Access Policies to Users in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation.

Use the following procedure to configure each external access policy that you want to use to control remote user access.

Note:
This procedure describes how to configure a policy only to enable communications with remote users, but each policy that you configure to support remote user access can also support federated user access and public user access. For details about configuring policies to support federated users, see Configure Policies to Control Federated User Access. For details about configuring policies to support public users, see Configure Policies to Control Access by Users of IM Service Providers.

To configure an external access policy to support remote user access

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. In the left navigation bar, click External User Access, and then click External Access Policy.

  4. On the External Access Policy page, do one of the following:

    • To configure the global policy to support remote 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, EnableRemoteUsers for a user policy that enables communications for remote users).

    • To change an existing policy, click the appropriate policy listed in the table, click Edit, and then click Show details.

  5. (Optional) If you want to add or edit a description, specify the information for the policy in Description.

  6. Do one of the following:

    • To enable remote user access for the policy, select the Enable communications with remote users check box.

    • To disable remote user access for the policy, clear the Enable communications with remote users check box.

  7. Click Commit.

To enable remote user access, you must also enable support for remote user access in your organization. For details, see Enable or Disable Remote User Access for Your Organization in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation.

If this is a user policy, you must also apply the policy to users that you want to be able to connect remotely. For details, see Apply External User Access Policies to Users in the Deployment documentation or the Operations documentation.