The Unified Communications Web API (UCWA) is now public. UCWA enables developers to quickly create UC apps and customize the Lync user experience. A new UC Web API web site is also now available for the developer community.

Authors: Alex Edelsburg, Microsoft Program Manager and Fernmarie Brady, Microsoft Program Manager

Publication date: March 12, 2013

Product version: Unified Communications Web API V1

The Unified Communications Web API (UCWA) gives Lync Server 2013 incredible reach across devices and platforms, and full-feature richness with support for Audio, Multi-View Video, and so forth. It is the powerhouse behind our experiences on the web (Lync Web App, Outlook Web App) and mobile/tablet (Windows Phone 8, iPhone, iPad, Android).

We are delighted to announce that UCWA is now a public API. UCWA is available to Web developers who can utilize it to bring the power of Lync into line of business apps. This makes Lync an even better value proposition for our on premises customers who can now humanize and customize their internal and customer-facing experiences.

Leveraging the most common web technologies and paradigms (HTTP, HATEOAS, OAuth, XML, and JSON), UCWA is a REST API that makes developing UC apps fast and easy. In this version, you can embed web chat, presence, and contact cards with HD photos into your app.

To help developers ramp up, we’ve introduced a key innovation by recognizing and embracing the web of APIs formed by the hypermedia links between resources, and making this web discoverable through the Dynamic API Graph, a visualization tool shown in Figure 1 below. Developers can seamlessly navigate in real-time to learn our APIs.

Figure 1. The Dynamic API Graph

To create a vibrant ecosystem and get developers coding, we created a library of interactive samples, shown in Figure 2 below, which you can run against a server running Lync Server or in a developer sandbox to see the request and response flow for the tasks you wish to execute with the API.

Figure 2. Library of interactive code samples

User Experience

To guide developers on that adventure, it is our pleasure to introduce the new UC Web API Developer Website that launched in public beta on March 4th, 2013. This new website incorporates some significant innovations:

A Rising Community of Developers

The UC Web API Developer website complements the Lync Dev Center on MSDN by specifically targeting mobile and web developers.

Interactive Demos

The website offers instant gratification through an interactive UC Web API demo. This demo is unique, because it showcases the power of the UC Web API in real-time, while also teaching developers to do the following:

Set and Subscribe to Presence

Send Instant Messages

Call via Work

Figure 3. Interactive UC Web API demos

Each of these tasks is demonstrated live, with code snippets shown in curl, a cross platform web request tool.

Setup Free

The website integrates with a developer sandbox, so that users can explore without having to deploy Lync Server. The sandbox enables up to 1,500 simultaneous developers, and provides three Lync login tokens to each, for up to eight hours--so they can start coding right away!

Our goal is to help mobile and web developers get familiar with the latest API for Lync Server--as they embark on the journey of embedding communications in any app.

We hope you want to try this latest addition to the Lync Server ecosystem. Visit the Lync Web Developer Website and try it out.

We look forward to your feedback: ucwawebsite@microsoft.com

Additional Information

Lync Server Resources

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Keywords: Unified Communications Web API, UCWA, Lync Web and Mobile Developer, UCWA Website