Bill & Greg's Most Excellent Adventure

customize Office Communicator

A colleague asked me if I was feeling better the other day and I asked him why he thought I was feeling bad. He said your IM says you have a headache "do not disturb". What he was referring to is the ability to customize Office Communicator. I customized mine and you can too!!!

Communicator 2007 client allows you to configure and use customized presence information. So how do I do it: 

• Create an .XML file (any name will do it - i.e: custom.xml) with a content similar to this :
  <customStates>
      <customState ID="1" availability="online">
          <activity LCID="1033">Working from Home</activity>
      </customState>
      <customState ID="2" availability="busy">
          <activity LCID="1033">working at customer site</activity>
      </customState>
      <customState ID="3" availability="busy">
          <activity LCID="1033">Meeting on Campus</activity>
      </customState>
      <customState ID="4" availability="do-not-disturb">
          <activity LCID="1033">Have a headache</activity>
      </customState>
  </customStates>
  
• Make the file you have created above accessible. As rule of thumb if you can access at the file through any of the following protocols you're in a good shape. 
  • File share
  • HTTP(s)
• Create the following registry key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator\CustomStateURL = file://server/share/custom.xml

• Restart Office Communicator.

That's it. :)