Being a network administrator, do you often feel helpless about the evidence which can demonstrate that guy is leaking company confidential information or spending too much time on chatting that has nothing to do with work? It is never a problem from now on, you can use IM monitor to get all chat logs of target people. Here, let me introduce a very easy-to-use IM monitor to you.

Colasoft protocol analyzer, which is a Wireshark-like network analysis software, and contains the IM monitor we need, therefore, the first step to monitor IM activities is to spend 3 minutes downloading a free trial Colasoft protocol analyzer now.

Alright, let me tell you how to monitor IM activities with Colasoft protocol analyzer now.

In Logs View, besides the four original logs: HTTP Requests, Email Messages, FTP Transfers and DNS Queries, we can monitor real-time activities and detailed messages of four most poplar instant messengers: MSN, AIM, ICQ and Yahoo Messenger. Picture 1 is an example of MSN Activities view.

IM Activities Information

Date Time - time information of the activity;
Node 1 - IP address of the node that is conducting the IM activity;
Session Name - account that is conducting the IM activity;
Content - detailed message content;

All IM messages are listed in time sequence, to view messages of a specific session, you can click the desired session name in the session name column, then a text file will pop up to show all the messages of the selected session. Picture 2 is an example of MSN messages

Automatically save all messages for future reference

By default Colasoft Capsa will not save logs of those IM activities, to enable this function, we have to make some log settings. Let’s take MSN log as an example:

Click "Log" button on the menu bar and then a dialog box will pop up as displayed in picture 3.

We can see Log File(s) is disabled. To enable log files, we have to click "…" to open another dialog box where we can define detailed saving options, as displayed in picture 4:

Log files can be saved in a single file or in multiple files. We may choose to split the file by month, day, hour, minute, KB or MB. In addition, we may define how many files to be saved. By combining these options we can make our customized log file saving settings as we wish.

Benefits:

• No need to purchase another IM monitor;
• Monitor all IM activities in real time;
• Save all IM messages for future reference;
• Prevent business secretes from leaking out via IM activities;
• Learn how much time your employees are spending in personal chatting during working hours;