I was tasked by our Information Security team to disable the ability to manually save chat transcriptions for Lotus Notes 8.5 users that are using the integrated Sametime chat. The vast majority of our clients have Lotus Notes Standard software installed, but are using the Lotus Notes Basic client. (Many of the clients do not have enough memory to run in Standard mode.) We do have some users that are running Lotus Notes Standard.

After some research (and a call to IBM Support), I was able to get an answer for the Basic client users. All that needs to be done is to add a NOTES.INI parameter to client workstations:

IM_ALLOW_SAVE_CHAT=0

This parameter has been there since Notes 7.0.4, and can be manually added, or added to a Desktop settings document, then pushed out using a policy.

This worked great for the Notes Basic clients, but had no affect for the Standard clients. When I asked IBM Support, I was given two settings to add to the plugin_customization.ini (again via a policy), but this didn’t work. This called for a more ‘social’ way of getting the answer.

I placed a post out there on Twitter:
Can someone at #LS11 ask around & find out how to prevent Notes Standard client users from getting option to save chat transcripts? Thanks!

A few short minutes later, the answer came in the form of this response by Gabriella Davis (also known as @gabturtle on Twitter):
@RayBilyk you can disable that via a policy.. it’s a ST policy option

So all you have to do is log into Sametime via a web browser, and select ‘Administer the server’ from the Administrator tools section. Next, select ‘Policies’ on the left, then select the Sametime Default Policy. Next, scroll down to the Instant Messaging section, and DESELECT the option ‘Allow to save chat transcripts’, and for good measure, SELECT the option to override all policies:

To be honest, I don’t know when it takes affect, but I made the change just before our server weekly maintenance reboots, so the next morning, it took affect. Not only am I not able to save the chat transcripts, but I don’t even see those options now…

Thanks Gabriella for once again proving that friends are there for you… no matter where they’re at in the world…