I’m new to this application so I know very little about it thus far. I was wondering if the openfire server stores a log with the communications of all end-users who use the application? On occassion and upon receiving legal discovery requests I am asked to pull the chat records between staff members and these records are used in court proceedings as necessary. Currently I have to go to one of the end users computers to recover the records and sometimes this involves traveling to numerous locations and possibly checking several computers. VERY time consuming to say the least. It would be so much easier if I could pull these records from the server when these requests come in. Does anyone know if this is even possible with the Openfire system? I am currently using Openfire Server version 3.7.1. Thanks.
There’s the audit log feature and an meSage archive plugin.
First, the history stored locally by the client can be deleted or altered by the user, so you should keep that in mind while using it as an evidence in court
To have history logs on the server there are two ways. One is with the Monitoring Service plugin, which you will find in the Plugins menu. But it is not developed or maintained actively and sometimes stops working out of nowhere, so i can’t suggest it 100%. Use it at your own risk. Also it will make you database grow huge over the time.
Another option is to turn on Message Audit Policy in the Server Settings (Admin Console). It will store conversations in logs (in xml format). I like that you can set how big the logs can be and how long should they be stored. Also it is good that they are not in the database. BUT, these logs are not easily readable. You can try audit log reader provided by a community user here https://community.igniterealtime.org/docs/DOC-1874
Thank you so much for the help wroot. Much appreciated.