Custom presence states in OCS – revisited again

I posted a while back about custom presence states (here and here). Well it turns out that a change made to an updated version of Communicator, requires (by default) that the custom state XML file is downloaded from a “secure” URL (so ruling out the file:// URL type).

I’ve posted my XML file to SkyDrive (since it’s available with an SSL connection and tends to be available from everywhere).

If you want to use the same URL, just open the following registry file and it will point your Communicator client at my XML file…

Registry file

Otherwise, add your own URL to the registry at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator
in a string value called CustomStateURL.

(tip – if you don’t trust me, download the REG file and drag/drop it into Notepad to verify that it’s not going to do bad things to your machine).