Now that you know the power of chat rooms. It is time to create one. Creating one will allow you to collaborate with the people who are important to you. You will be able to create a chat room if your Lync policy allows this. This policy is usually setup by the LYNC administrator.

Creating a room is quick and easy:

In the Lync main window, in the Chat Rooms view, click the "Add a room, +" button , then click "Create a Chat Room" on the dropdown menu. (If you don’t see these options, your administrator hasn’t given you room manager authorization.)

This will launch your browser and navigate to "My Rooms page". Click on the "Create a new Room" this will take you to the room creation page where you have to fill in the room details:

 

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  1. In the Room Name field, give your new chat room a name, then click the Check Names icon to make sure it’s not already being used.
  2. In the Description field, explain the purpose of your chat room so that others can see what this room is about
  3. Select a privacy setting for your room from the three options:
    • Open: Anyone will be able to find this room (via search), open it, and read and write in (“post to”) it.  Open rooms have no “membership” per se.
    • Closed: Non-members will be able to find this room and see who is a member, but only members will be able to open the room, read or post to it.  (This is the default setting.)
    • Secret: Non-members won’t be able to find this room, learn who has membership in it, or read or post to it.
  4. Add-in (Optional): Click the down arrow below the Add-in heading and select one or more web applications to add to your room. You will be able to access these add-ins only if you have rights for them
  5. Manager (Optional): In the Managers field, type the names of anyone you want to be able to manage the room. All managers are able to add room members and edit room settings. Room creators are automatically added as managers.  Once you’ve added some names (separated by semi-colons), click the "Check Names" button to make sure Lync can identify these people.
  6. Members : In this field, type the names of anyone you want to have access to the room.  (You’re automatically a member of any closed or secret room you create.)
  7. Notifications : If you don’t want to notify your contacts that they’ve been made members of your room, select the “No invitations sent to members” button.  Otherwise sending an invitation setting will be inherited from the Lync category and this can be set to true or false.
  8. Click the Create button.  This will take you back to the My Rooms dialog, where you’ll see a confirmation that your new chat room is ready to go.  The next time you click the Member of tab on the Chat Rooms view of the Lync main window, you will see your chat room listed.

Now that your chat room is ready go ahead and follow it. Customize it by adding topic feeds and notifications which allow you to stay on top of all your communication.