Unable to send Links via Lync or OCS.

Issue:  Unable to send Links via Lync or OCS.

Error: This message was not delivered to because the message contents are restricted by policy. For more information, contact your system administrator.

 

Problem Statement:

When you Lync Server configuration not allowing the hyperlink including http, https, www sharing through Instant Messaging or chatting. Instead of blocking you can show the warning message to sending while URL sharing.

Best Practices:

Here you have choice to block URL sharing, allow URL with warning message and last option will be all URL sharing however disable the hyperlink. I love option three because as far as URL is not hyperlink or highlight you cannot click on it. So copy paste the URL and make you dayJ.

List Blocked Prefixes: (My be by default) J

[callto: , file: , ftp., ftp:, gopher:, href, http: , https:, ldap:, mailto:

news:, nntp:, sip:, sips:, tel:, telnet:, www*.]

If you use above prefix including Instant Message, your message will be blocked and you will get above error message.

 Resolution:

You can allow the URL filtering In Lync / Communicator IM, so it will be easier to user to do their work.

Instead of blocking URL filtering you can use following option, so that end user will get URL and will not breach policy.  

Option1:  

Block the message from being sent altogether. If you choose this option, messages containing hyperlinks will be blocked and won't be sent. Instead, the user trying to send the hyperlink will see an error message similar to this:
This message was not delivered to  because the message contents are restricted by policy. For more information, contact your system administrator. 

You can set above option via Power shell: 

Set-CsImFilterConfiguration –Identity global –Enabled $True –Action Block

GUI Mode:

1.    Open Lync Control Panel > Click on IM and Presence
2.    Click On URL Filter
3.    Edit existing scope (Global) or Create new Scope
4.    Checked the ‘Enable URL Filter’ check box.
5.    Checked the ‘Block URLs with file type extension’ and select ‘Block hyperlinks’
6.    If you want the exclude the local intranet hyperlink.
7.    Add the require hyperlink prefixes and commit the changes.
8.    Test and get the desire result with red color J.
   

 

 Option2:

Allow the message to be sent, but issue a warning that the message contains hyperlinks. If you do this, two things will happen. First, the "toast" that appears when a user is first notified about the instant message will appear with a warning; this warning is something we can compose. Second, any hyperlinks in the message itself will also be prefaced by that warning. In other words, the message text might look like this:

Warning: Be sure you are following company policy before clicking a hyperlink in this message: 

You can set above option via Power shell:

Set-CsImFilterConfiguration –Identity global –Enabled $True –Action Warn –WarnMessage "Warning: Be sure you are following company policy before clicking a hyperlink in this message"

 

GUI Mode:
1.    Open Lync Control Panel > Click on IM and Presence
2.    Click On URL Filter
3.    Edit existing scope (Global) or Create new Scope
4.    Checked the ‘Enable URL Filter’ check box.
5.    Checked the ‘Block URLs with file type extension’ and select ‘Send warning message’
6.    If you want the exclude the local intranet hyperlink.
7.    Add the require hyperlink prefixes and commit the changes.
8.    Test and get the desire result with red color J.

Option3:

Allow the message to be sent, but disable the hyperlink so that a user can't just click the link and be transported to that site.

 
This will allow user to copy the link portion of the text and then paste that link in to Internet Explorer, but at least that requires them to do a little bit of work before they visit the site in question. 

You can set above option via Power shell: 

Set-CsImFilterConfiguration –Identity global –Enabled $True –Action Allow

GUI Mode:

1.    Open Lync Control Panel > Click on IM and Presence

2.    Click On URL Filter
3.    Edit existing scope (Global) or Create new Scope
4.    Checked the ‘Enable URL Filter’ check box.
5.    Checked the ‘Block URLs with file type extension’ and select ‘Do not filter’
6.    If you want the exclude the local intranet hyperlink.
7.    Add the require hyperlink prefixes and commit the changes.
8.    Test and get the desire result with red color J. 

Third option will be the best option, were we are not breaching policy as well as allowing user to share URLs. 

Please check with Management and let me know for further action.

Thank you.