Persistent Chat Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting for Persistent Chat starts with the basics, which consists of the Event Viewer and the Services console on the Persistent Chat Server. Error messages that are logged for Persistent Chat appear in the Lync Server portion of the Event Log under the Applications and Services log heading, and this is typically the first place to look when you are experiencing problems with Persistent Chat. There are also several Windows services installed as part of the role installation on each Persistent Chat Server. Two of these services are specifically related to Persistent Chat: the Lync Server Persistent Chat service, and the Lync Server Persistent Chat Compliance service. Both of these services are set to start up automatically when the system is turned on, and need to remain started continually for the Persistent Chat service to function. Additional information about the Persistent Chat environment can also be quickly retrieved by executing the following command using the Lync Server Management Shell: Get-CsService -PersistentChat.

If the Persistent Chat services are started and the Event Log does not provide helpful clues as to the cause of an issue, an additional useful tool for troubleshooting a Persistent Chat problem is synthetic transactions. Synthetic transactions can be used to test sending and receiving messages in a chat room between two users. You can initiate a synthetic transaction using the Lync Server Management Shell by executing the Test-CsPersistentChatMessage cmdlet. Sender and receiver credentials are supplied as parameters, and you obtain these by first using the Get-Credential cmdlet to store the credentials in variables that are referenced within the Test-CsPersistentChatMessage cmdlet.

The following example shows the commands used to execute a synthetic transaction, testing the sending of chat room messages between two users who are members of the chat pool named Design:

Click here to view code image

$cred1 = Get-Credential "companyabcdavid"
$cred2 = Get-Credential "companyabckevin"
Test-CsPersistentChatMessage -TargetFqdn lyncentpool.companyabc.com -ChatRoomName Design -SenderSipAddress "sip:[email protected]" -SenderCredential $cred1 -ReceiverSipAddress "sip:[email protected]" -ReceiverCredential $cred2.

The first and second commands cause interactive prompts for the password of the sender and receiver users, respectively. After these credentials are entered, they are stored in the variables that are referenced in the third command. The end result is then displayed as either Success or Failure, as shown in Figure 10.17. If the transaction fails, an error message is displayed to assist in further diagnosing the cause of the issue.

Figure 10.17. Persistent Chat synthetic transaction used for troubleshooting.