In Outlook Live, the instant messaging feature in Outlook Web App is enabled by default. However, you can use Windows PowerShell to disable instant messaging. For example, you might want to turn off instant messaging if it's distracting to students or conflicts with a desktop instant messaging client.
Let's look at how to:
To learn how to install and configure Windows PowerShell and connect to Outlook Live, see Use Windows PowerShell.
View the Outlook Web App policies available to your organization
Run the following command after you connect to the Outlook Live server-side session:
Get-OwaMailboxPolicy | Format-Table Identity
In this example, we've used the Format-Table option to display only the identity of each available policy. The command returns a list of the Outlook Web App policies that you can change. In the list of results, notice that each mailbox plan has an associated Outlook Web App policy. This means that users who are assigned different mailbox plans can also have different Outlook Web App settings. For example, you can disable instant messaging for users assigned the GalDisabledMailboxPlan, and enable instant messaging for the default mailbox plan. For more information, see Mailbox Plans for Outlook Live.
View or verify instant messaging settings
Run the following command after you connect to the Outlook Live server-side session:
Get-OwaMailboxPolicy OwaMailboxPolicy-DefaultMailboxPlan | Format-List *instant*
In this example, we've used the Format-List option to display only the settings for instant messaging. Using the wildcard character * returns all settings that contain the term "instant".
Disable instant messaging
Run the following command after you connect to the Outlook Live server-side session:
Set-OwaMailboxPolicy OwaMailboxPolicy-<mailbox plan> -InstantMessagingEnabled $false
For example, to disable instant messaging for all users who are assigned the default mailbox plan, run the following command:
Set-OwaMailboxPolicy OwaMailboxPolicy-DefaultMailboxPlan -InstantMessagingEnabled $false
To turn instant messaging back on, run the following command after you connect to the Outlook Live server-side session:
Set-OwaMailboxPolicy OwaMailboxPolicy-<mailbox plan> -InstantMessagingEnabled $true
For example, to enable instant messaging for all users who are assigned the default mailbox plan, run the following command:
Set-OwaMailboxPolicy OwaMailboxPolicy-DefaultMailboxPlan -InstantMessagingEnabled $true