Conferencing Policy Settings: AllowConferenceRecording

 

 

 

This article is part of the series An In-Depth Guide to Conferencing Policy Settings.

 

 

Parameter/Property Name	Allowed Values
AllowConferenceRecording   This is a per-organizer setting.	· TRUE: Users can record conferences. · FALSE: Users cannot record conferences. This is the default value.

 

Lync Server Control Panel Equivalent Setting: Recording

 

 

 

Do you know how many times the authors of the Lync Server PowerShell blog have sat in a meeting and come up with a brilliant idea, only to see that brilliant idea wither and die because no one in the meeting happened to be taking notes? Well, OK, you're right: that's never happened, at least not to us. On the other hand, it could happen to someone else, someone who might actually have a brilliant idea. Which, needless to say, is at least one reason why Microsoft included a feature in Microsoft Lync that allows attendees to record meetings and conferences.

 

If you didn't know this feature exists, then do the following: the next time you're in a meeting, click the More Options button, the little button that looks like this:

 

>>  

 

In the popup menu that appears, you should see the Start Recording option:

 

 

Click that, and you'll be able to record the meeting. (And not just the audio: you'll be able to record all the application sharing, polls, whiteboards, instant messages, and anything else that takes place during the meeting.)

 

Actually, we need to clarify that a bit: you'll be able to record the meeting if the AllowConferenceRecording setting in your conferencing policy has been set to True. If this setting is False (the default value) then the Start Recording option will not be available when you click More Options:

 

 

 

In other words, your ability to record a conference hinges on the settings in the appropriate conferencing policy. What do we mean when we say the "appropriate" conferencing policy? Well, AllowConferenceRecording turns out to be a per-organizer setting: that means it applies to the person who organized the meeting (and, by extension, to everyone who participates in that particular meeting). Consider two users and two conferencing policies:

 

User	Conferencing Policy	AllowConferenceRecording
Pilar Ackerman	global	False
Ken Myer	RedmondConferencingPolicy	True

 

Pilar Ackerman's conferencing policy does not allow conference recording; Ken Myer's conferencing policy does allow conference recording. What does that mean? That means that conference recording will not be allowed in any meeting organized by Pilar: the Start Recording option will not be available in anyone's copy of Microsoft Lync. And yes, that includes Ken Myer's copy of Lync. When it comes to a per-organizer setting like AllowConferenceRecording, the only conferencing policy that matters is the conferencing policy assigned to the meeting organizer.

 

Of course, that also means that everyone who participates in a meeting organized by Ken Myer will be able to record the conference. That's because Ken Myer's conferencing policy allows recording, and that setting is thus applied to every single person in the meeting, including Pilar Ackerman. In other words, either everyone in the meeting can record the proceedings or no one in the meeting can record the proceedings.

 

Note. Well, OK: every authenticated user logged on to the internal network can (or cannot) records meetings. As it turns out, there's a separate setting – AllowExternalUsersToRecordMeeting – that applies to external users.

 

So how do you enable the conference recording feature? Funny you should ask:

 

Set-CsConferencingPolicy –Identity global –AllowConferenceRecording $True

 

To disable recording, just set AllowConferenceRecording to False. You know, like this:

 

Set-CsConferencingPolicy –Identity global –AllowConferenceRecording $False