Topic Last Modified: 2013-12-17

In conjunction with the reporting features, Lync Online provides access to five Windows PowerShell cmdlets that help generate those reports and are also can be used by administrators to return customized reporting data. Lync Online also includes the REST (Representational State Transfer), which can be used by developers to retrieve customized reporting information.

The reporting cmdlets available to administrators include:

For the most part, administrators should use the reports available in the Office 365 admin center: not only are those reports auto-generated, but they also provide a graphical representation of the data that many administrators will find easier to interpret than the raw number values returned by the reporting cmdlets. However, administrators familiar with Windows PowerShell can use the reporting cmdlets to return data that is not readily available from the Lync Online reports. For example, the reporting cmdlets return information about session duration (the amount of time, in minutes, that each session lasted). Session durations are not available using the Lync Online reports. Likewise, in daily view the Lync Online reports display information only for the preceding 7 days. If you would like to view the daily totals for a different day (for example, a date from three weeks ago) you can do so by using the reporting cmdlets.

Administrators with a development background can use the REST web service to obtain information not displayed in the Lync Online admin center. The REST service is similar to the SOAP service, in that each technology provides a way to transfer XML data between a client and a server. However, the REST service has at least two advantages over the SOAP service. For one, REST performs XML data transfers using a standardized format known as the ATOM syndication format. By contrast, SOAP using a non-standard format when transferring data. In addition, REST is able to transfer data across networks that block HTTP verbs other than GET and POST.

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