Chapter 19 -- Supporting Instant Messaging

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Chapter 19

The previous chapter discussed how to configure and administer Microsoft Chat Service, which allows users to engage in online group discussions. Chat Service is one of the two real-time collaboration (RTC) services that ship with Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. This chapter covers the other RTC service—Microsoft Exchange Instant Messaging Service (IM). As you ll see, Instant Messaging offers instant, one-to-one communication between users.

NOTE

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Data and video conferencing are also RTC technologies that can be run with Exchange 2000 Server. However, since conferencing is an add-on product to Exchange 2000 Server, we will not cover it in this book.

Instant messaging is a bit like using e-mail and a bit like using a telephone. Like e-mail, the communication is in text form rather than being spoken. Like a telephone conversation, an instant message conversation takes place instantly and in real time. Instant messages are also not recorded in the information store; therefore, they are not saved after they leave the screen. Once they are gone, there is no way to recover them.

The benefits of using IM include the following:

• It reduces telephone tag. Rather than leaving voice mail messages for someone who is out of the office briefly, you can check another user's presence information to determine when he or she returns, and then send a message and wait for the reply.
• It allows users to multitask—for example, a person could work on a Word document and answer questions via instant messages at the same time.
• It breaks down the traditional barriers to communication, such as geographic boundaries. For example, if the person you need to communicate with is in a different city, you don't need to pick up the phone to make a call. Instead, you can check the presence information of the user with whom you wish to communicate and, if that person is on line, exchange messages while working.

Instant Messaging uses an emerging technology that can be tricky to understand. We'll begin by looking at the IM architecture, and then we'll see how messages are passed from one IM user to another.