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Lyncin Log

01 November 2011 Chris Lync (9)
Lync doesn't have any built in capability to log IMs to a local file. So I built an add-on to do so. Download, unzip and run LyncLog.exe. It will automatically hook into Lync when it is launched and log your IMs to a folder inside My Documents called Lync Conversations. If you want the logger to always run then stick a shortcut to LyncLog.exe in the startup folder on your start menu.
 
 
If there's something you'd like to see added please leave a comment and let me know. If I have time I may take a crack at it.
 
UPDATE Nov 2, 2011: Added check to only allow a single instance of the app to run at a time. 
 
UPDATE April 3, 2012: Here's the requested version built with framework 3.5.
 
 

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Comments (9) -

  • Ray

    3/27/2012 7:42:37 AM | Reply

    Any chance you can compile with .NET 3.5?  Many users in my environment are still running XP SP3 without .NET 4.0 on it.  Thanks!

  • Chris

    4/3/2012 2:49:34 PM | Reply

    Hi Ray,
    Sorry it took me a bit. I just saw your post.
    I just built and posted a version of the app using framework 3.5. I haven't had a chance yet to test. So please let me know if you have any issues.

  • Ed

    4/16/2012 12:41:09 PM | Reply

    Enhancement Request:  Modify the naming of the txt file.   It would make it easier for users to be able to search the folder or even sort by file name with the file name being user_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.txt.  

    Nice work.
    Ed

  • Chris

    5/10/2012 8:05:25 AM | Reply

    Hi Ed,
    Thanks for the suggestion. I had considered this, but was a bit unsure how to handle it since you can have conversations with several users.
    When joining a conversation with several users what would the file/folder username be? In the case where you have conversation with a single person initially and then invite others the file would have already been created under the name of the initial user.
    Another option would be to create a copy of the file for each person in the conversation. Though I'm not fond of the idea of duplicates.
    I personally use it on Win7 which includes everything in My Documents in its indexing process by default. So when I want to find a conversation by a particular person, or containing certain keywords, I just plug them right into my start menu and get a quick list of matches.
    If you have suggestions for the multiple persons dilemma please share.
    Thanks,
    Chris

  • Ross

    8/2/2012 10:57:55 AM | Reply

    Would it possible to have the Lync Logs merge with Pidgin logs in a Pidgin-readible format...
    The pidgin logs are in html instead of plain text but they are located in
    ~driveletter~\Users\~username~\AppData\Roaming\.purple\logs\sipe\~lync-username~\~userconvo~\~date~(dot)html
    My purpose being that I prefer to use Pidgin with the SIP protocol versus using just Lync, so I am able to have all my conversations in one place (Using MSN and Google Talk as well in our environment).

    Thanks!

  • Chris

    9/11/2012 3:10:21 PM | Reply

    Hi Ross,

    Thanks for the suggestion.

    Are you asking to simply have the logs output to a different location using a different format? Or are you suggesting an entirely plugin that ties into Pidgin instead of the default Lync client?

    The former is probably relatively easy to implement (assuming I know the format), and I can probably take a crack at it when I have a free minute. The latter would likely require tying into the Pidgin API which I am not familiar with.

    Thanks,
    Chris

  • Adam

    10/9/2012 11:32:51 AM | Reply

    Awesome job. My issue is that Lync uses one email address and Outlook a different one, so the native logging doesn't work. With this, I can finally log important conversations. Awesome work! One question for you which is, is there any way to have the log file name auto-generate say the name of the person you are messaging or anything else that might make it easier to find a specific conversation amongst the file list? any feedback on that would be much appreciated.. again awesome work thank you so much for this!!

  • Chris

    11/19/2012 1:41:56 PM | Reply

    Hi Adam,
    Thanks for the feedback.
    Please see my reply to Ed below regarding the file/folder naming convention. I think it would be fairly easy to do what you're asking if all conversations were always limited to one person. However, it's not as straight forward since Lync conversations can involve several people who can join/leave at different times during the conversation.
    As previously mentioned I find the built in Windows 7 indexing/search functionality to be a good work around for this. Since the names are logged inside the file all you'd need to do is plug in the user's name in your start menu and all logs containing conversations with that user should show up.
    I hope this helps.
    Thanks again,
    Chris

  • Arthur

    11/25/2013 11:53:26 PM | Reply

    Hi! Great thanks for very useful tool! I use conversations with several users very rarely, so I prefer to save history in user_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.txt format for one-to-one conversations. Could you provide source code for editing it?

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