persistent chat Archives - Jack Stromberg

Here is how to configure persistent chat for your Lync 2013 deployment.

Login to your Lync Front End Server and start the Lync Server Topology Builder
When the Topology Builder window opens, select Download Topology from existing deployment and select OK
Save the file to your desktop
Expand Lync Server -> Your Site -> Lync Server 2013 -> Persistent Chat pools
Right click Persistent Chat pools and select New Persistent Chat Pool...
On the Define the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) page, enter the FQDN your standard front end server and check Single computer pool. If you want to deploy a highly available environment for persistent chat, you will need to deploy 2 new machines to put into a persistent chat pool and check Multiple computer pool. It is not supported by Microsoft at this time to collocate the persistent chat service on the same machines in an enterprise front end pool. Once done, click Next.
1. In this tutorial, I am going to go over deploying persistent chat in a highly available environment.
If you clicked on Multiple computer pool, enter in the machine names where the persistent chat service will be installed, and click Next.
On the Define properties of the Persistent Chat pool page, enter in the Display name of the Persistent Chat pool (you can name this whatever you would like to) and click Next
Select the SQL Server store you wish to use and select Next
Select or create a new file store and click Next
Select the Front End pool/server as the next hop pool and click Finish
Once done with the Persistent Chat wizard, right click on Lync Server in the Topology Builder and select Publish Topology...
Click Next on the Publish the topology window
Click Next on the Create databases screen
Click Finish once the topology has been published
Complete the following steps on each of the Persistent Chat servers you created
1. Login to the server that will be running the persistent chat service
2. Copy/mount the Lync Server 2013 installation media
3. Run the setup.exe program from the Lync Server 2013 installation media
4. Click Yes on the "In order to run the software on this CD, the Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 x64 Minimum Runtime - 11.0.50727 Package must be installed." Dialog box.
5. Click Install on the Microsoft Lync Server 2013 dialog box
6. Check I accept the terms in the license agreement and click OK
7. Once installed, click on Install or Update Lync Server System
8. Click Run next to Step 1: Install Local Configuration Store
9. Check Retrieve directly from the Central Management store and click Next
10. Click Finish once the installation has completed.
  (oops, no picture for this one :()
11. Click Run next to Step 2: Setup or Remove Lync Server Components
12. Click Next
13. Click Finish
14. Click Run next to Step 3: Request, Install or Assign Certificates
15. Click Request on the Certificate Wizard screen
16. Check Send the request immediately to an online certification authority and hit Next
17. Click Next on the Certification Authority (CA) page
18. Click Next on the Certification Authority Account page
19. Click Next on the Specify Alternate Certificate Template page
20. Type in a Friendly name for the certificate (I would just use whatever you used for the Persistent Chat Pool Display Name) and click Next
  1. NOTE: If you are deploying multiple servers in the Lync Persistent Chat Pool, make sure to check the Mark the certificate's private key as exportable box.
21. Enter in your Organization and Organizational Unit and hit Next
22. Enter in your Country/Region, State/Province, City/Locality, and hit Next
23. Hit Next on the Subject Name / Subject Alternative Names screen
24. Hit Next on the Configure Additional Subject Alternative Names screen
25. Hit Next on the Certificate Request Summary page
26. Hit Next once the certificate request process has finished executing commands
27. Hit Finish on the Online Certificate Request Status screen
28. Hit Next on the Certificate Assignment screen
29. Hit Next on the Certificate Assignment Summary screen
30. Hit Finish on the Executing Commands screen
31. Close the Certificate Wizard screen
32. Click Run next to Step 4: Start Services
33. Click Next on the Start Services screen
34. Click Finish on the Executing Commands screen
35. Click Run next to Service Status (Optional)
36. Scroll through the list of services and find Lync Server Persistent Chat and verify it is Running.
At this point of the deployment, the infrastructure should be in place to actually push Persistent Chat out to your clients. Next we will create a test group.
Login to the Lync Admin Panel (Cscp)
Select the Persistent Chat tab
Click New and select your persistent chat pool and click OK
Type in a Name for your persistent chat category and select who can have access to the category. This category will be the container that holds a set of chatrooms. Click Commit when finished.
Next, select the Persistent Chat Policy tab and double click on the Global policy.
Check Enable Persistent Chat and click Commit
Next, we need to create the actual chatroom. This step needs to be done via PowerShell, so open up the Lync Server Management Console.
Execute the following command
New-CsPersistentChatRoom -Name "My test chatroom" -Category "Test Category"
Next, we will assign a user to the chatroom, so execute the following command:
Set-CsPersistentChatRoom -Identity "My test chatroom" -members @{Add="sip:[email protected]"}
Now, we are ready to join our test chatroom. First, close your Lync client if it is already running.
Relaunch Lync, and you should see the persistent chatroom icon.
Double click on the chatroom and try sending a message.
Congrats! If you have made it to this point, you should now be able to offer a new collaborative feature to your users at your organization! 🙂

Symptom: After installing the Persistent Chat module for Lync Server 2013, you receive the following error when trying to manage Persistent Chat from the Lync Admin Web GUI (CSCP).

1 Warning(s) All the channel servers are down.

Solution: Unfortunately, there are a few issues that could cause this. Here are a few that I tried to get things working.

Solution #1: Ensure Cumulative Update 2 is installed.

Download a copy of the Lync Update on the persistent chat server
1. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36820
Double click LyncServerUpdateInstaller.exe
Click the Install Updates button
Once all the updates have finished installing, click Close

Solution #2: Add only 1 server to the pool, then add the rest

Login to one of your front end servers and open up the Lync Server 2013 Topology Builder
Delete the persistent chat pool you currently have deployed
Publish your topology
Recreate your persistent chat pool, but only add 1 server during the setup wizard.
Once done running through the wizard, right click on your persistent chat pool and select New Server...
1. Repeat this until all the servers you wanted to deploy are part of the topology
Publish the topology

Notes: I couldn't get event viewer to log anything referencing this error, which I thought was weird. Additionally, I noticed that when originally deploying my topology, the topology wizard was complaining saying that "At least one machine must be active." in order to successfully deploy the persistent chat pool. I believe this is a bug in the topology builder and the only way I could get the topology builder to deploy properly, was by following Solution #2. This ensured at least one server in the pool had a machine state marked as "Active".

Here is a screenshot showing the persistent chat servers in an enterprise pool marked as inactive and topology builder complaining with the error "At least one machine must be active."

Jack Stromberg

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Tag Archives: persistent chat

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[Tutorial] Setting up and installing persistent chat for Lync Server 2013

Lync Server 2013 - All the channel servers are down