Haiku # 32

That picture makes me

Look fat. Thank goodness for the

Privacy settings.

Remember privacy? If you don't, well, we forgive you: after all, privacy seems to have fallen completely out of style these days. And yet, believe it or not, there was a time when people didn't feel compelled to share everything they do, or think, with the rest of the world. (No, we are not making that up!) Instead, some things were kept, well, private:

Private: Secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others: a private hideaway. Designed or intended for one's exclusive use: a private room.

Weird, huh? After all, how could life possibly be worth living if we weren't able to quickly and easily discover what everyone else in the world had for breakfast this morning?

Note. Two peanut butter and chocolate chip granola bars and a cup of coffee.

At first glance you might not think that privacy would be too terribly important to Microsoft Lync Server 2010; after all, the software is designed for you to share all sorts of information – including your current location and your current availability – with Tom, Dick, and Harry. And yet, in Lync Server 2010 Microsoft has tried to strike a balance between those who want to (and/or need to) share information with those who might want to keep at least some of their information a little more private.

Note. Private. Remember? "Secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others: a private hideaway." Right: private.

One way Lync Server does this is through the aptly-named privacy configuration settings. (Oh, and through the corresponding privacy configuration cmdlets: Get-CsPrivacyConfiguration, New-CsPrivacyConfiguration, Remove-CsPrivacyConfiguration, and Set-CsPrivacyConfiguration.) For example, by default Microsoft Lync does the following:

· Automatically adds all your team members to your Contacts list.

· Publishes your photo, making it available to anyone who might be interested.

· Makes your presence information available to everyone in your organization.

· Publishes your location information along with your status and availability.

Now, in theory, users can always go in and disable these options themselves. Like we said, though, that's just a theory: as the millions of VCRs still dutifully flashing the time 12:00 attest, people hardly ever go in and change default settings.

Note. You're kidding, right? A VCR, a videocassette recorder? OK, fine:

VCR: A type of video tape recorder that uses removable videotape cassettes containing magnetic tape to record audio and video from a television broadcast so it can be played back later.

Are we the only ones over 30 years old who read these haikus?

Or, we mean to say, would we be, if we, uh, actually were over 30 years old ….

This is where the CsPrivacyConfiguration cmdlets come into play: they let you flip-flop the default privacy settings. What does that mean? Well, like we said, by default your photo is published in Microsoft Lync; if you don't want your photo published you have to open up the Options dialog box and select Do not show my photo. By changing the privacy configuration settings, however, you can set things up so that your photo is not published by default; instead, if you want people to be able to see your photo you'll have to go into the Options dialog and configure Lync to show photos.

And how hard is it to modify the privacy configuration settings? Not really all that hard, to tell you the truth:

Set-CsPrivacyConfiguration –Identity global –DisplayPublishedPhotoDefault $False

That's all you have to do. Oh, and you're not limited to just changing global settings (settings that would then affect all your users). Instead, you can have different privacy configuration settings for each of your sites, and even different privacy settings for each of your User Server services. For example, suppose, for some reason, the users who employ the User Server atl-cs-001.litwareinc.com should only have their presence information exposed to people on their contact list. Okey-doke:

Set-CsPrivacyConfiguration –Identity service:UserServer:atl-cs-001.litwareinc.com –EnablePrivacyMode $True

And, of course, simply reviewing your privacy configuration settings is as easy as … well, we're not sure what it's as easy as. (Pie? Falling off a log? Shooting fish in a barrel?) But it is pretty darn easy:

Get-CsPrivacyConfiguration

That's all we have time for today. Tune in tomorrow when we continue our journey through the dusty annals of history. Up next: telephones that were actually wired to the wall and couldn't be carried around from place-to-place! And, if time allows, a mysterious and long-forgotten device called the newspaper.