Corporate Instant Messaging

IM or Instant Messaging is both boon and bane for corporate networks. If each user on the network runs MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and ICQ, you can expect your Internet bandwidth to be quickly consumed. 

However, instant messaging can be useful within the company. Users can leave messages for each other, talk through the network instead of tying up a phone line, participate in discussions regardless of where the members are physically located and save on costs. 

MS Exchange 2000 has an Instant Messaging server built-in that allows users on the network to connect and talk to each other, without requiring to go the Internet to do so. Typically, even two users sitting next to each other would require to communicate using a server, say, in the US, which is an unnecessary and silly way of doing so. Instead, by using a corporate instant messaging solution, the users will only need to communicate with the nearest server at the speed of your network and not your Internet connection and get responses faster.

But before we start on setting up Exchange for instant messaging, there are a few terms and technologies one must be aware of. So let’s take a look at them first. 

Exchange Instant Messaging relies upon a protocol called RVP. Note that this itself is the name of the protocol and not an acronym–that is, it does not expand to anything. RVP is what is used for the communication between the different clients. The implementation of RVP on Exchange also uses Internet Information Server, Active Directory, XML and HTTP. 

IIS is used for providing the HTTP services over which the IM protocol operates. HTTP is the transport used for the actual Instant Messaging that occurs and runs on Port 80. There are a number of other ports that are used for other functions such as file transfer, web cam, etc. XML is used for the actual message interchange and Active Directory provides the logins and search capabilities. Now that you know what the different parts of the Exchange Instant Messaging Service are, let’s get down to setting it up.

Installing Exchange is a chore by itself and should be done with extremely careful planning. If your company operates globally, you must already have infrastructure in place. If you are planning to set up Exchange for your company, careful study and planning of the entire network as well as requirements must be done to ensure a smooth and painless implementation.

However, installing the service is simple enough. There are only a few things that you need to keep in mind while doing so. You will need to install a copy of Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server on a machine that will be used as an IM server. 

Install Windows 2000 Server or Advanced Server on a machine in your network. Install Active Directory on it and make it part of your main Windows network. It should be able to pick up the login information correctly. Once that is done and you’ve verified that the Users and groups are visible in the server, install IIS if not already done so. Also install Exchange and join it to an existing domain or create a new one. Next, open up Internet Services Manager and create a new Web site by doing the following.

1. Right-click the machine name and select NewàWeb Site. 



2. Enter a descriptive name such as Corp IM Server.


3. Select the IP address of the machine for creating the Web site.


4. Select a Home directory which you’d like the server to use.


5. Complete the web site wizard.

The next thing you need to do is setup an IM Virtual Server in Exchange. For this you need to use the Exchange System Manager MMC. Start up this program from the Exchange program group and follow the instructions below to setup a virtual server.

1. Open the Organization that you see in the left window.



2. Expand the “Servers” and the particular Exchange server that is to be used for IM.


3. Expand the Protocols list and select Instant Messaging (RVP).


4. Right click this and select NewàInstant Messaging Virtual Server.


5. Enter a new display name


6. Select the Web site you created above to use in this server. 


7. Enter the DNS name for the server.


8. Next you will be asked if you wish to create this as a Home Server. A Home Server is one where users connect to directly
for IM features. Routing Servers for IM on the other hand simply forward IM requests and responses to and from other

Home Servers. If this is the first IM server on your network, simply turn the check box on and continue.



9. Complete the wizard.

The next series of steps lets you allow the users in your network start using Instant Messaging. To do this, you must enable this for them.

1. Open up the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC



2. Right-click the user-name that you wish to enable this service for and select Exchange Tasks


3. Select Enable Instant Messaging from the pop-up


4. In the next screen, browse for the Instant Messaging Server and select it. You will also be required to set the home
directory for it 



5. Confirm the actions and save the user’s profile.


6. Repeat steps 2—5 for each user 

And finally, allow the users to install the MS Exchange Messenger client on their systems. The Exchange Messenger is just like the MSN messenger client and is available at www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads. This client can not only connect to .Net Passport services for Internet IM, but can also connect to an Exchange server and allow corporate IM.

After installing the client, open it up and go to the Options>Accounts screen. Select Exchange in the top part and enter the user’s sign-in name at the Exchange server at the bottom. For e.g. if the user’s login is ‘sanjay’ on the ‘IMServer’ Exchange server, then the IM login would be sanjay@IMServer. The user can also of course enter any Hotmail or Passport account that he has to connect to the Internet and get his buddy list.

Once you complete this screen, you can login to the Exchange server. 

To add new corporate users, simply select ‘Add a friend’. You will be shown a search box where you can select to use the

email address or name. The e-mail address search works similarly to the Internet version. However the name method opens up an Active Directory search and lets you select users from the ADS. 

Once you do set up your list, you can mix and talk to both Internet and Corporate users. In case you do not wish users to chat with people outside your network, you can disable the facility by disallowing RVP access over the Net. 

You can also allow reverse proxying into your network through a routing server so that employees sitting outside your network can still talk to colleagues inside the network even if protected by a firewall. However, these are advanced configuration issues that would take many pages by themselves and beyond the scope of this article.

As you can see, setting up IM using Exchange is quite simple. You can allow much more efficient team collaboration using IM in your network rather than using phones or over the Internet. The savings on cost itself can justify the use of this new feature of Exchange 2000 in your network. 

Vinod Unny is a Technology Consultant at Enterprise InfoTech