OC: Multiparty IM messages generate new window after 10 minute idle period

  • Article

So I was contacted in IM today by a past colleague (Hey Steve) now doing some consulting and he brought up this issue and trying to find the value as well as some background.

The issue came up with a customer who wanted to have what is referred to as persistent chat. We don't position ourselves as being a Chat solution but we do have the ability to keep a conversation window open which satisfies that request. The reason you would not want to make this change just because it looks good in general is that you could negatively impact our MPOP (Multiple Points of Presence) functionality. We support up to 8 endpoints by default, on the Forest properties and User tab - Maximum devices per user - 8. This would mean that if I signed in to Communicator on my desktop and opened an IM window with my entire team and then went downstairs to a training room and signed in again, I would not get any of the IM conversation from the team because it was not not timing out.

If you were to call and speak to me on this subject I would have you consider the impact of changing MPOP to 1 so that if you signed in on another endpoint you would sign yourself out on the other system. Now this is not necessarily the greatest solution overall but does help avoid those helpdesk calls when people claim to not be getting IMs from peers.

WORKAROUND

Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.

To work around this problem, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type Regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Name the new value IMIdleTimeout .
5. Right-click IMIdleTimeout, and then click Modify.
6. Click Decimal under Base.
7. In the Value data box, type 360 , and then click OK.
8. Quit Registry Editor.

Note This workaround increases the idle time-out to 360 minutes. However, this increase in the idle time-out period causes other issues when you use the Multi-Points of Presence (MPOP) mode. When you increase the idle time-out period, users who roam between different devices may experience these other issues. Therefore, we do not recommend this workaround for MPOP users.