Configuring Custom Presence States in Microsoft Lync 2010

It's been a while since I post on my blog. I will be posting "Configuring Custom Presence States in Microsoft Lync 2010". Its almost the same process/steps just a bit change on the file location of the application to update from my previous post "Configuring Custom Presence States in Communicator 2007 R2".

Again by default, Microsoft Lync 2010 enable users to set their presence state to one of the following five states and added Appear Offline:To define custom presence states in Microsoft Lync 2010, 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 Lync 2010. 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 Lync and then Create an XML configuration file, by downloading the sample on my Skydrive
2. Save it to the Lync 2010 Folder. Common Lync 2010 directory is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Lync". For 64-bit: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Lync".
   
3. After saving, Launch REGEDIT and look for this directory: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\POLICIES\MICROSOFT\COMMUNICATOR
4. Create a STRING called CustomStateURL and set the following value: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Lync\Presence.xml
5. Exit regedit and Relaunch Lync 2010.