Sun Java Communications Suite 2005Q4 Evaluation Guide

Using Advanced Instant Messaging Features

This section describes how to use Access Manager to provision users and how to configure archiving for Instant Messaging. Access Manager enables you to create roles and policies and apply those to users to define their access rights. Previously, this guide described how easy it is to assign a user to a given role. This section enables you to examine policy and role creation to define a new Instant Messaging policy.

API Level Filtering

In The Instant Messaging Demo, you learned that access and privacy filters can be used by end users to block Instant Messaging traffic or presence updates from certain individuals. Additional flexibility can be obtained by deploying filters that perform text conversion or block certain payloads that contain viruses. For example, an administrator can create a filter that blocks or converts obscene words in an instant messaging conversation. Other uses include text translation, rich text to plain text conversion, or domain level blocking. Sun Java System Instant Messaging provides a Message Conversion API that developers can use to create more complex filters that can be applied to the Instant Messaging Server. Learn more about API level filtering from the Instant Messaging product documentation (http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1309.1).

To Provision Users with Access Manager

In this task, you perform feature-level access control, a powerful tool that enables or disables client functionality. You create a new instant messaging role and corresponding policy that limits the instant messaging functionality to the basic features. Users assigned to this new role are not able to join conference rooms, send polls, or perform any of the other advanced instant messaging tasks.

Access Manager uses the Instant Messaging Service and the Presence Service to manage the Instant Messaging policy. The Instant Messaging Service contains the policy rules for communicating with others, as well as the ability to chat, exchange files, join conferences, send alerts, and more. The Presence Service contains the policy rules for determining the ability of users to share their presence with others, as well as to access, manage, or publish one's presence.

Steps

Use a completely new web browser to start Access Manager.

For example, http://wireless.map.beta.com/amconsole.

If you are using Internet Explorer for the Portal Server desktop and Communications Express, start Mozilla or Firefox.

In the top level organization (o=isp), choose Roles from the View drop-down menu in the left pane of the Access Manager console.

Click New to create a new role.
1. Select Static Role, type IM Limited User in the Name field, and click Next.
2. Define the following:
  - Description: Limited access role
  - Type of Role: Service
  - Access Permissions: Organization Administrator
3. Click Finish to create the role.
  
  Now that you have created this new role, create policies that apply to this role.

In the top level organization (o=isp), choose Policies from the View drop-down menu in the left pane of the Access Manager console.

Click New to create a new policy.
1. Select Normal, and type Limited access instant messaging in the Name field.
2. Click OK.
3. In the Description field, type Policy for Limited access instant messaging users and click Save.

Choose Rules from the View drop-down menu in the right pane of the Access Manager Console.

Click the New button to define rules for this policy.
1. Select Instant Messaging Service for the Rule Type and click Next.
2. Type IMLimitedRule for the Rule Name.
3. Type IMResource for the Resource Name.
4. Select all Action check boxes.
5. Click the Deny radio button for the following Actions:
  - Ability to Exchange Files
  - Ability to Join Conference Rooms
  - Ability to Manage Conference Rooms
  - Ability to Manage News Channels
  - Ability to Moderate Conference Rooms
  - Ability to Read News
  - Ability to Send Alerts
  - Ability to Send Polls
6. Click Finish.
7. Click Save.
  
  You have successfully created an Instant Messaging Service rule for this policy.

Click New to define another rule for this policy.
1. Select Presence Service for the Rule Type and click Next.
2. Type PresenceLimitedRule for the Rule Name.
3. Type PresenceResource for the Resource Name.
4. Select all Action check boxes, but do not click any Deny radio buttons.
  
  All Actions are allowed.
5. Click Finish.
6. Click Save.
  
  You have successfully created a Presence Service rule for this policy.

Choose Subjects from the View drop-down menu in the right pane of the Access Manager console.

Click New to define the mapping between policies and roles.
1. Ensure that the Subject Type is Access Manager Roles and click Next.
2. Type IM Limited User in the Name field then click Search to search through the list of available Access Manager Roles.
3. Find the role isp > im limited user, highlight this role, and click Add.
4. Click Finish.
5. Click Save.
The new roles and policies have been created. Next you assign Tina to this new Role and note the effect on her Instant Messaging client.

Choose Roles from the View drop-down menu in the left pane of the Access Manager console.

Click on the properties arrow to the right of the IM Limited User role.

The IM Limited User pane appears.

In the right pane, choose Users from the View drop-down menu.
1. Click Add on the right pane.
2. Type Tina in the User ID field and click Next.
3. Select the check box next to Tina's name and click the Finish button.
  
  You have assigned Tina the Instant Messaging Limited User Role, so she has limited access to Instant Messaging.
Duncan initially has kathy and robert in his Instant Messaging buddy list. The user tina has not yet been added. You can click the Start button from the same Instant Messenger window you used to start kathy. If you start Tina's Instant Messenger, notice that her window has very limited Instant Messaging functionality. This type of provisioning is feature-level provisioning that involves defining roles and policies for these roles. Changing the policy has the effect of removing or adding functionality to the client itself. You can experiment changing the policy and restarting Tina's client to observe the effect. You can also apply the appropriate role to others and see its effect as you start Instant Messaging as those users.

To Archive Chat Sessions

The Sun Java Communications Suite provides the following two ways to archive chat sessions:

Archive provider API. Using this API, developers can extend the archive capability.
Portal Server search database or Message Store. Without changing any capabilities, you can archive chat sessions in Portal Server's search database or in Messaging Server's Message Store.

By default, the single host deployment example, on which this evaluation guide is based, uses the Message Store to archive chat sessions. By viewing Duncan's inbox, you can see that he has several messages that contain the chat conversations he had with Kathy and others.

To change the Message Store to the Portal Server search database to archive chat sessions, do the following:

Steps

Edit the /etc/opt/SUNWiim/default/config/iim.conf file and set the following parameter:
iim_server.msg_archive.provider = "com.iplanet.im.server.IMPSArchive"

Restart the Instant Messaging server.
/opt/SUNWiim/sbin/imadmin refresh

Perform a poll, or a chat, to generate some Instant Messaging data. For performing poll or chat, see The Instant Messaging Demo.

Click the Search tab from within Duncan's Portal Server desktop.

In the Find field, type a key word such as poll or a word from the chat, and click Search.

The results of the search are displayed. Note that the poll results look like actual final poll results, not extraneous data points. Also, the entire conversation is returned, not just the sentence containing the keyword.