Hi there,

Is it possible to block messages from a list of user for a particular user? E.g. I want black all users from sending messages to IT department employees. Is it possible? Or even better to make IT employees invisible for all users except other IT employees...

I am going to say that this is probably not possible. We are federated with Microsoft, and when I have had interactions with their help and support, I am able add the person who helped me as contacts and then IM with them. I am willing to bet they don't really like that since it doesnt show in the support history and such.

This sounds like what you are trying to prevent and Microsoft doesnt have it setup that way. Just my experience.

Hi,

You can try to use Ethical Wall to achieve this.

Some more information on Ethical Wall:

http://www.fabbricadigitale.it/eng/whats-new/news-releases/ethical-wall-for-ocs-lync.html

Hope it helps.

Best Regards!

thanks guys!

 

Hi there,

As Jidan says ethical wall software will provide that functionality, but it usually costs a decent amount.

There are a couple of other options that may help.

1) You can block individual users from your Lync client, right click on the contact, change privacy relationship/block contact. (however this might not scale depending on the number of employees).

http://blogs.technet.com/b/lync/archive/2008/05/28/how-to-be-visible-to-defined-contacts-only.aspx

2) You can setup the Lync user to only give presence to those already on their own contact list, so if IT users only had other IT users on their contact list, they would only show as 'available' for those users. Called enhanced presence privacy mode

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg399028.aspx

 

Hope this helps

Tom

 

Thanks Tom!

It's a really good ideas. I suppose theres a way to manage block lists programmatically if they are storing on a server. Otherwise it'll be not that simple to manage them on a users PC...

 

 

Sadly there are not loads of ways to manage contacts programmatically.

Your best bet may be creating a template user and cloning that user using this script

http://www.expta.com/2011/01/introducing-lyncaddcontacts.html

thanks

Tom

Via setting up a new client policy, where

ShowManagePrivacyRelationships

is set to true, these users with that policy assigned will be able to manage the relationship as described at

http://kb.iu.edu/data/bbuk.html

e.g.

By this they could block the whole communication from users of a domain, and then allow from some of these users again (whitelist).

You can also, when in the Relationship-view, right-click each Relationship-level and add a certain domain, to have this level as standard for all users of this domain.

Already assigned levels of contacts in your buddy list are not affected, so if you, e.g. already have contacts from abc.com set to "Workgroup" level, then these will stay with this level, also if you afterwards add the abc.com to the blocked domains, at least as far as I have tested.

You can also add public domains.

If you only want to block IMs, you could do this by

a.     Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
b.     Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator
c.     On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
d.     Type DisableIM, and then press ENTER.
e.     Right-click DisableIM, and then click Modify.
f.      In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
g.     Exit Registry Editor.
Note After the DisableIM registry entry is set to 1, the following statements are true:
o    The user cannot send or receive any IMs.
o    The user is registered on the server as a user who has no IM capability.
o    The file transfer feature is disabled

(Lync 2010)

or

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync
DWORD32
Value_Name: DisableIM
Value: 1

(Lync 2013)

• Proposed as answer by UKL Thursday, October 24, 2013 4:35 PM
• Edited by UKL Thursday, October 24, 2013 7:08 PM

I just wanted to say - some 4 years after you posted this, it's helped me... I had an internal user who was using IM to get around the proper contact/support process and this has possibly saved my sanity. (and has prevented me from replying to him in an unprofessional manner which would likely get me fired).

So, thanks!