Some time ago, I wrote on OCS custom status fields and how to implement them…
- Custom presence states in Office Communicator
- Custom presence states in Communicator, reprise
- Custom presence states in OCS – revisited again
Well, security changes in the way Office Communicator works mean that, by default, the client needs to download its configuration file from a secure location. This has caused a problem for a good many people who used to rely on the status file being on their hard disk.
If you don’t have access to a web site that can publish a file via SSL, then I’ve posted a few other samples here… thanks to Matt McSpirit for the tip on how to do it 🙂 I struggled for a while by using SkyDrive to do it, but the eventual URL kept changing – now I can host a bunch of these files on the blog server!
Applying the settings
Here is the Registry file which will configure Communicator to use the “Microsoft UK” custom status below. If you’re happy with that, just
- Sign out of Communicator entirely, close the application (right click on the Communicator icon in the system tray, choose Exit).
- Click on the Registry link above, choose “Run” from the dialog, then confirm that you want to allow the registry settings to be applied.
- Restart Communicator again – if everything works, you’ll see custom status appear by clicking on the big coloured blob in the top left…
If you’d rather use a different set of statuses, try downloading the registry file and save it somewhere, drag/drop it it into a new, blank Notepad window, and replace the URL with one of the following ones… then save it, and apply the settings as above.
