Category: OCS

Office Communicator 2007 R2 – Using Custom Status

Fancy being able to use a custom status on OCS?  Well I looked on the web today to try and find out how and if it was possible to do this (as it was ‘out of the box’ in Lotus Sametime).

Thankfully it is possible but wasn’t quite as straightforward as it seemed so I thought I’d write this a) for you and b) for me (my memory is atrocious!).

First, open your favourite text editor and paste the following:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <customStates
 xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/09/2005/communicator/customStates"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:schemaLocation=
 "http://schemas.microsoft.com/09/2005/communicator/customStates
 http://livecommteam/sites/main/ice/Wave%2012%20Docs/CustomActivities.xsd">

<customState ID="1" availability="online">
<activity LCID="1033">Working from Home</activity>
 </customState>
 <customState ID="2" availability="busy">
 <activity LCID="1033">In a Live Meeting</activity>
 </customState>
 <customState ID="3" availability="busy">
 <activity LCID="1033">Meeting with Customer</activity>
 </customState>
 <customState ID="4" availability="do-not-disturb">
 <activity LCID="1033">Interviewing</activity>
 </customState></customStates>

Save this somewhere (I used c:program files (x86)microsoft office communicator) as presence.xml

Open Regedit and open:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoft]

Look for a Communicator key and if there isn’t one, create it.

Under [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftCommunicator], create a new String with name: CustomStateURL and value of:
file://c:program files (x86)Microsoft Office Communicatorpresence.xml.

If you want the option to appear offline also, add a DWORD with name: EnableAppearOffline and value of 1.

All the above info is freely available on the net and easily found, however it didn’t work without the following, add a new DWORD with name EnableSIPHighSecurityMode and value of 0.

Restart OCS and bingo.

References:

  • http://blogs.technet.com/b/toml/archive/2009/04/08/communicator-r2-custom-presence-not-working.aspx
  • http://blogs.technet.com/b/ramo/archive/2008/07/08/how-to-enable-appear-offline-presence-status-in-office-communicator.aspx
  • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd819946%28v=office.13%29.aspx