Re: Hosted Lync and Chat Rooms - IM, meetings and conferencing - Office 365

We have just started using hosted Lync (sipdir.online.lync.com) to replace Live Meeting. Permanent and temporary chat rooms would be a highly beneficial for us, all of them private to our domain. Is that supported? I could not find any information about it either way other than, yes, it is a supported feature of the product. I can't see anything about chat room for Lync on-line.

Hi Randall,

Do you mean the Persistent Group Chat feature which can keep the content such as text and files after a conversation ends? If so, this feature is not available in Lync Online. For more information about Lync Online features, please download Microsoft Lync Online for Enterprises Service Description.docx from the site: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=13602.

Thanks,
Mindy Pan

Thanks Conn_R, that is helpful for how to do it. However I still need to understand whether or not we can do it for hosted Lync. Does Microsoft permit its Lync on-line customers to manage their own chat rooms?

Hi Randall,

Thanks,
Mindy Pan

Hi Randall,

How are things going? Do you need any further assistance with this issue?

Thanks,
Mindy Pan

Yes. that answered my question.

I can't see why Microsoft is not supporting chat rooms in Lync on-line. On-line chat rooms are very useful for companies to collaborate. Persistent group chat allows people to communicate effectively across multiple time zones on a particular business topic, inviting others to attend, search by keyword, print, product announcements, new feeds, etc. This makes Lync on-line considerably less valuable as compared to SalesForce.com Chatter or any of the free Jabber implementations.

Well, hopefully in a future release.

Hi Randall,

Thank you for your reply. I believe lots of customers also need this feature. Therefore, I would suggest you submitting the feedback at the following site:
http://mymfe.microsoft.com/Microsoft%20%20Online%20%20Services/Feedback.aspx?formID=210

Our Product Team will take all suggestions and feedback into consideration for future releases.

Thanks,
Mindy Pan

I tried submitted feedback on that form but it gave me a lovely screen of error messages.

Persistent group chat rooms are an absolute necessity for Lync Online. It is one of the most valuable features that a business-focused IM platform can offer. And it will dramatically impede implementation of Lync Online if it's not available. Has it been added to the roadmap yet?

Hi Kent,

Thank you for your feedback. I have forwarded your feedback to the feedback collecting team. Currently, I haven’t received any information about this group chat rooms issue. However, many features of current programs were designed and upgraded based on customer feedback.
Again, thank you for working closely to improve our products and service.

Have a nice day.

Thanks,
Mindy Pan

So is group chat available for Lync Online yet?

Hi Phil,

Group chat or persistent chat is not available for Lync Online. This feature will be available for Lync Server 2013. For detailed information, you can refer to the following article:

Lync Online features
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj822172.aspx

Thanks,
Mindy Pan

But the question is specific to Lync Online... are there plans to add the Persistent Chat feature to Lync Online (not Lync Server)?

FWIW - It's becoming a recurring issue for me since we've moved to Office 365 that the cloud versions of the tools we use (Lync, SharePoint, etc) are not on par with what we had on prem. And I appreciate the feature matrices that call out the limitations, but MS needs to make it much more apparent when they're selling O365 to CIOs on what it can and can't yet do. We spend millions of dollars on O365 only to take a step backward in functionality and a CIO doesn't know it until we're knee deep in migration. Ok, I'm off my soapbox now. :)

I agree with David that the feature differences should be more clear, though it's really my fault for not reading all of the available literature (such as that feature matrix).

More importantly though, Office 365 is supposed to be a "no excuses" cloud optoin ("no excuses" is the words of the keynote speaker at the 2011 SharePoint conference in Anaheim). Some of these feature limitations (such as the lack of persistent chat in Lync Online) are incompatable with that ideal.

Some of them are more understandable (like no farm-level modifications in shared-tenancy SharePoint Online), but I seriously doubt persistent chat for Lync presents a significant technical challenge for mighty Microsoft.

That leaves three possibilities: 1) they assumed customers didn't want it -unlikely; 2) they purposely left it out so as to motivate customers to buy Lync Server; 3) it's on the road map; 4) there is some other feature in the Office 365 suite that that can be used to similar effect.

So which is it?

Hi David and Phil,

I would like to share the following article with you:

Comparing Lync Online with Lync Server (on-premises)
http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/lync/480.aspx

Regarding the Persistent Group Chat feature, I suggest you submit your feedback via http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BX11EN/135. The Microsoft Product Team takes into consideration all suggestions and feedback for future releases.

Thanks,
Mindy Pan