How to save Lync conversation history when Corp has blocked this feature?

Question

I am using Lync 2010 (4.0.7577.4356), which we use on my small development team for IM'ing. Lots of technical Q&A are handled through this program and lots of other items that need to be documented. Unfortunately, our parent company has a policy that turns off "Converation History", so once the window is closed, it's gone.

I've done a fair bit of research and I haven't found a way to save this data since the settings have been made at our parent Corporation's level (through Active Directory, or whatever). This is information that we need and even my boss has tried finding a way to save this information (everything short of copy-pasting everything before closing the window or computer).

How can I accomplish this task? Are there any programs out there (freeware or otherwise) that can save these conversations? Does anyone know of a way that I can hook up Lync (the instant messaging module) to another instant messenger (GTalk, Jabber, ICQ, Yahoo, or whatever) -- then record each message from there? I'm a software developer, so if anyone knows of a means of communicating with Lync, and is able to access the messages, that would help too!

Anything at this point would help... thanks in advance!!!

-Panuvin

Clitoris

Answer 1

There's a client-side Lync SDK, which is pretty easy to use if you're already a .NET developer.

It's easier to do something like this and have it running on every member of your small dev team's machine alongside Lync - easier than trying to re-invent a central conversation store.

I recently blogged about recording the length and status of Conversations, and also about identifying different sorts of Call within the Conversation (you'd be looking for Instant Message Call type).

After that, you'd need to subscribe to the Flow and catch every message to and fro, and log them to a database or whatever. There's a really good book which could help you with this: Unified Communications with Microsoft Lync. If you're serious about doing Lync development, this is definitely the book for you!

Azotize

@Panuvin - have you had any luck implementing anything with this solution? I am curious if the network policy was still an obstacle. – Irv

Answer 2

Try this https://github.com/bujocek/LyncIMLocalHistory. I've used the Tom Morgans answer and created own local lync (Skype for Business) conversation history tracker. You can build it from source or just unpack and run latest release here: https://github.com/bujocek/LyncIMLocalHistory/releases

Electrothermics

Tested also on Skype for business and seems to be working just fine. – Electrothermics

Works just fine on SkypeBusiness 2015 on Win7 – Fever

Answer 3

With Lync 2013, CTRL+S will save the current tab to your Outlook/Exchange Conversation History folder. I'm not certain if this works with 2010.

Demoiselle

This has no effect if the "Conversation History" feature is disabled. – Irv

I am seeing different behavior than what @Irv writes -- conversation history is greyed out but Ctrl-S saves it in Outlook. I am using 2013 versions of both. – Purgation

Answer 4

You may try this: https://github.com/PhilippeRaemy/LyncLog. This tool saves the conversations in text files, using a file naming convention that makes it easy to identify the time and participants.

Hakan

How do i use it? I downloaded it. I donot see instruction as how to hookup to skypeforbusiness? – Elderly

It hooks automatically to the running Lync client. there is no special instruction. See in the code, LyncLog/LyncLog/Program.cs, line 64: client = LyncClient.GetClient(); – Hakan