Considerations for Internal Users

When planning a deployment including IM, there are a few items to take into consideration when there will be internal users on the system. Although things such as server capacity are accounted for with the capacity planning of the Front End Server, it is important to consider the following impacts:

• Compliance and regulatory requirements

• Impacts on supporting systems

• End-user training

• Appropriate usage policies

When planning a deployment, always be aware of laws and regulations that might affect your users and your implementation. For example, find out whether there are requirements around archiving IM traffic for particular departments such as legal, finance, or executives. If there are, be sure to account for the Archive role in the deployment and determine how much space is required to archive the data for the period specified by company policy or specific applicable regulations.

For general users, determine whether there will be integration between the Lync client and applications such as Outlook. By default, Lync wants to store conversations in Exchange so that they can be recalled later by the user. If this will be enabled, account for the added storage usage in Exchange. If storage quotas are already enforced in Exchange, this might not be an issue, but users should be made aware that their usage within Exchange might increase and that they might end up with a shorter window of messages in their mailbox in order to stay within their quota.

One area often missed by deployments of enterprisewide applications, such as Lync Server 2013, is the creation of appropriate end-user training. Although administrators spend a lot of their time researching and learning technologies, most end users do not. As such, it is the responsibility of the team deploying the application to develop training for end users. This typically should consist of cheat sheets explaining how to perform basic tasks and, when possible, should include screenshots to make it clear to users where to click and what to do.

The last thing to consider when planning a basic deployment of Lync Server 2013 is the creation of an appropriate use policy. This is where you can set the rules around the usage of IM and define behaviors that are to be avoided. For example, although it might seem common sense to some, set a policy stating that instant messaging is not to be used to send sensitive materials outside the company.