Monday, January 17, 2011

Adding new Status in Office Communicator

I was browsing through web this week and what interested me is adding an additional status to the Office Communicator...so googling gave some 2 to 3 approach...but after doing some R&D...this is the final approach which was successful...so here it is for your doing and enjoy...

How many of us thought the status provided in the communicator is not enough! Here is the method to add your own status messages to Communicator Client in your system... See by default there are Available, Away, Do not Disturb, Be Right Back status present in your client
in addition we can tweak to add 4 more to the list (It is supposed only 4 more can be added, I feel thats the way it works!)...
All you need is to do 2 things...

Create a XML file in the following format and put the same in your
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communicator – folder

Goto Notepad and paste the below code and save as Presence.xml

You see the XML tags in between? ...these are status that is listed.

*********************** XML File starts here ***************************


********************** XML Ends Here ****************************

You can tweak the same file to add your own status message like Lunch time, Working from home etc.


Next step is the important one...

Sign out your communicator, go to task manager and end the process of communicator.exe, this is to ensure next time you login the Presence.xml is read from the location...


Goto Windows registry editor... in Start > Run > Regedit

Traverse to node HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator

Create 2 things given below,

1. Create a String key with name CustomStateURL, give the value as

file:///c:/Program Files/Microsoft Office Communicator/Presence.xml

(Path of your XML file in c:\ we are using File protocol to call it, that’s all!)











The purpose of creating DWORD key is in Office communicator R2 edition, they have secured the way the Status is read, they have made the status to be read from Server (they consider that Highly secure !?!).. Not any more!!!


2. Create a DWORD key with the name EnableSIPHighSecurityMode, give the value as 0 (ZERO), it will be interpreted as 0x00000000(0)





Done!! ... Sign in to your communicator and you can see your status ... Viola!!!

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