Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Configuring Custom Presence States in Communicator 2007 R2 [Updated]

After posting "Enabling User to Appear Offline" I will be posting "Configuring Custom Presence States in Communicator 2007 R2"
Again by default, Office Communicator 2007 R2
enable users to set their presence state to one of the following five states and added Appear Offline:To define custom presence states in Office Communicator 2007 R2, you will create an XML custom presence configuration file, and then specify its location with the CustomStateURL registry key.
Caution:Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

Configuration files have the following properties:
  • Custom states can be configured with Available, Busy, and Do Not Disturb.
  • The availability attribute determines which Presence button is associated with the status text of the custom state. In the example below, the status text, Working from Home, is displayed to the right of the Presence button.
  • The maximum length of the status text is 64 characters.
  • A maximum of four custom presence states can be added.
  • Valid address types for the CustomStateURL registry key are FILE:, HTTP:, and HTTPS:
Note:If you implemented a custom presence state URL in previous versions of Communicator by using the CustomStateURL group policy, you might have to modify the URL or change the EnableSIPHighSecurityMode security level so that the custom presence state URL will work in Communicator 2007 R2. If the custom state presence URL no longer works, do one of the following:
  • Reformat the custom presence state URL to an encrypted http (https) URL.
  • Set EnableSIPHighSecurityMode group policy to 0.
Configuring Custom Presence States:
  1. Close the Communicator and then Create an XML configuration file, by downloading the sample on my Skydrive
  2. Save it to the Office Communicator Folder. Common Office Communicator directory is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communicator". For 64-bit: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator".
  3. After saving, Launch REGEDIT and look for this directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Lync HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\POLICIES\MICROSOFT\COMMUNICATOR
  4. Create a STRING called CustomStateURL and set the following value: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator\Presence.xml
  5. Exit regedit and Relaunch Office Communicator.
Update:
February 10,2011: Skydrive Link

For other Information:
Configuring Custom Presence States in Microsoft Lync 2010



Friday, June 11, 2010

Microsoft Communications Server "14" Announced

Communications Server “14” all of its features finally announced and made public today at TechEd. Hopefully soon I will have some blog posts out on the new functionality and new configurations! but I will still also post for 2007 R2.

http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/cs14/en/us/new-features.aspx