Managing External Web Conferencing Features

Enabling remote access to the web conferencing features of Lync Server is actually performed with the remote access policies. As long as a user is associated with a policy that enables remote access, the user has web conferencing capabilities through the Edge Server from the Global conferencing policy.

After deploying Edge services, the option exists to enable anonymous users to join web conferences hosted by the Lync Server infrastructure. Anonymous users are considered people who are not federated partners or users without a Lync Server enabled account. These users cannot authenticate with credentials, so they are considered anonymous to the pool users. Anonymous access to conferences can be enabled to allow authenticated users, federated users, and anonymous users to all collaborate.

To configure the external access rules and anonymous access, the conferencing policy must be edited:

1. Open the Lync Server Control Panel.

2. Select Conferencing in the navigation pane.

3. Highlight the Global policy, click Edit, and click Show Details.

4. Verify that the Allow Participants to Invite Anonymous Users check box is selected (see Figure 6.9).

Figure 6.9. Editing web conferencing policies.

5. If external users should be allowed to control shared applications or desktops, ensure that the Allow External Users to Control Shared Applications check box is checked.

6. Click Commit.

To enable anonymous access and external sharing control for the Global policy through the Lync Server Management Shell, use the following command:

Set-CSConferencingPolicy Global –AllowAnonymousParticipantsInMeetings $true –AllowExternalUserControl $true

If enabling anonymous access and external user control features must be limited to specific locations or user groups, an additional conferencing policy should be created. As with the External Access Policy, a site policy automatically applies to an entire location, and user policies can be assigned to individual users.