My group is rolling out Lync 2010 Group Chat and it seems from the documentation that the Lync Server does not log actual conversation history for Group Chat. I find this suspect because if conversation history is enabled in a given chat channel, even on log out, the history remains for the room. I have not been able to find where the channel history is stored however.
Is that information written to the back end MSSQL Database? And if so, is there a way to get it out into a .txt or similarly readable format? (I have almost no experience with SQL Databases!)
I was also wondering if anyone knew if the Archiving server role for Lync Server would also archive messages in Group Chat like it does with Lync? Lync and Group Chat are two separate clients but they run on the same server…
Best Answer
According to Microsoft's TechNet article about it, you'll want to enable a feature called 'Compliance' for your Group Chats. This will have it keep a record of all group chat related things. The article doesn't make it clear whether or not an Archiving server is required for that specific functionality, but it does say if you want to be able to retain individual IM messages, you DO need an Archiving server.
There's another feature of Group Chat, called Persistence, which is described as: "Group Chat feature that enables Group Chat content to be retained after the end of a Group Chat session and accessed on an ongoing basis."
I think between those two features you should be able to accomplish what you're looking for.