Lync March 2014 Update (CU5) & Inline Images (now it’s broke!)

It appears as thought either the previous implementation of inline image copy/paste was working because of a bug or the update introduced a new bug.  So what is the issue?  (SEE BOTTOM FOR UPDATE)

Updating my workstation with the March 2014 patch (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2863908) my client shows this version now:

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When a user attempts to copy/paste a picture inline to the IM window you get this message:

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Prior to this patch, the copy/paste of images to the inline conversation window worked fine.  In the organization we currently had peer-to-peer file transfer off for the customer network due to security concerns.  Since the inline image is simply utilizing that feature, we decided to enabled peer-to-peer file transfer in the conferencing policy.

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Once I enabled the policy and logged out and back into my client, I was able to inline image again.

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So there you have it.  If you update to the March 2013 and need to use inline images, make sure to enable peer-to-peer file transfers in your conference policy.

UPDATE: I have confirmed this was an intended change with part of SP1 due to some concerns around archiving and the fact that images were not stored in the archiving database.

UPDATE: To be clear, the client updates DOESN’T change your server policy.  The issue is, if you had the peer-to-peer file transfer disabled previously this feature worked fine.  Once you apply this patch, if you don’t enable peer-to-peer file transfer it no longer works.

10 thoughts on “Lync March 2014 Update (CU5) & Inline Images (now it’s broke!)

  • March 21, 2014 at 6:33 pm
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    If it is a client update, how can it change the policies on the server?

    Reply
    • March 22, 2014 at 3:51 pm
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      it doesn’t change the server policy, but if your server policy before was to disallow Peer-to-Peer file transfer it didn’t affect this behavior in the client. However, CU5 changes the behavior and now Peer-to-Peer file transfer MUST be enabled to use Inline Image transfer.

      Reply
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  • March 25, 2014 at 6:36 am
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    Makes sense I guess.

    The change in CU1 is just closing a security loophole inadvertently opened with the ‘paste photo’ update from last year.

    Thanks Richard!

    Reply
    • March 26, 2014 at 3:19 am
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      Agreed. Now we need an option to turn off file transfer but still have copy/paste of images. Too often these settings (see pictures in conversation window) need more options than what is given to us.

      Reply
      • April 13, 2014 at 7:28 pm
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        Hi Richard,

        So just to be clear, we can’t do inline images unless we turn ON peer to peer file transfer in our conferencing policy ? We currently have it turned OFF in our conferencing policy. This just puts us in a bad spot as many users want this ability and yet security team wants it disabled. Any other options here ? Thanks.

        Reply
        • April 14, 2014 at 1:16 pm
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          At the current time, there are no other options other than not updating the Lync client, which I’m sure the security team will be equally unhappy about.

          Reply
  • April 14, 2014 at 4:10 pm
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    Thanks Richard. Another issue with File Transfer is not being able to set size limits. Even if we did turn ON File Transfer, then this is another concern. Can’t win situation. 🙂

    Reply
  • June 23, 2014 at 5:06 pm
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    What’s been frustrating is that in a multi-party lync conference call, we can no long inline paste also broke, and we miss it.

    Reply

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