How to Restrict the Use and Indexing of Web Discussions (283986)

SUMMARY

When you are deciding whether to enable the use and indexing of Web discussions in a workspace, consider the following:

• You may choose whether or not to disable the discussions feature entirely, and whether or not to enable the search and indexing of discussion items.
• If you enable search and indexing of discussion items, users are then able to search the text within those items.
  
  NOTE: Discussion items are not secured and are viewable by all users. This means that users can view discussion items even if they cannot view the document being discussed. If discussion items in your workspace contain references to sensitive information in the documents being discussed, you may want to disable search and indexing.

To enable or disable the use and indexing of discussions, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Portal Server Administration.
2. Right-click your workspace name in the tree view, and then click Properties.
3. Click the Subscriptions/Discussions tab.
   
   The settings are configured under Discussion Settings.

You should also consider whether to restrict discussions to items stored in workspaces on the server. By default, this restriction is not set, and users can discuss external documents (for example, a page on an Internet-based public Web site). When a user connects to the dashboard site to discuss a document stored in a workspace, he or she opens the collaboration toolbar to access the discussions feature. If the collaboration toolbar is left open, SharePoint Portal Server logs the URL of any Web site visited by the user (along with the user name) in the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) logs stored on the system drive.

Therefore, if you are concerned about privacy issues related to logging the Internet-browsing activity of your users, you should instruct them to close the collaboration toolbar when they are finished discussing a document. You may also choose to restrict discussions to items stored in workspaces on the server. If you do this, when users navigate to a Web site with the collaboration toolbar open, SharePoint Portal Server will detect that the URL is not inside the workspace and will not log anything further.

To restrict discussions to items stored in workspaces on the server, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Portal Server Administration.
2. Right-click your server name in the tree view, and then click Properties.
3. Click the Other tab.
4. Under Discussion Settings, click Restrict web discussions to items stored in workspaces on the server.