Create a web-based IM chat tool

Question

Greeting all,

I need to create a web site that allow a visitor to chat with a user signed on to Office Communicator.  (yes, this is very similar to the OCS CWA, except that the visitor doesn't need to sign in -- instead I will hard-code the account ID).

I'm not sure where to start. Specifically, i have the following questions:

1.Should I use UC Client API or UC Managed API?(or something else)

2. Are there any similar examples?

3. Is there any way to get source code of OCS CWA?

4. I have been able to get the BroadcastIM sample to work. This only sends IM to a group, how can i make it be able to receive messages?

I am new to this area, so any guidance will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Gary

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XIII

Answer 1

Gary,

Check this out http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ucmawcf

Search the forum you may find answer.

 

Have fun.

Answer 2

Hi Gary,

I'd suggest you use the UC Managed API (UCMA) 2.0. You can use the UCMA WCF interface (the download miamiocs2007 linked to) to communicate with OCS from your web application. There is a getting started document included that should help you with the basics, and feel free to post any questions you have here.

Could you explain a little more about what you're trying to do? Are the visitors to the site going to be represented by a single "catch-all" OCS user, since they aren't signing in?

Michael

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Michael Greenlee | linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgreenlee | blog: http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/michael_greenlee/default.aspx

Answer 3

Thank both of you for the answer. I checked out the WCF and tested it on my system. The Application Provisioning part took me quite a while to get it right, but after that everything worked just fine! Now I can have my web app to talk back and forth with a Communicator R2.

What i'm trying to do is to create a web page that enable web site visitors to initiate a chat with my Communicator. I will post my progress here as I move along. As this point, all the visitors share the same username/password, because I didn't find any anonymous chatting support on OCS. Is there any better way to solve this issue?

Another question: can I use UCMA to allow sharing desktop between the web site user and communicator user?

Thanks!

Gary

 

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XIII

Answer 4

Thank both of you for the answer. I checked out the WCF and tested it on my system. The Application Provisioning part took me quite a while to get it right, but after that everything worked just fine! Now I can have my web app to talk back and forth with a Communicator R2.

What i'm trying to do is to create a web page that enable web site visitors to initiate a chat with my Communicator. I will post my progress here as I move along. As this point, all the visitors share the same username/password, because I didn't find any anonymous chatting support on OCS. Is there any better way to solve this issue?

Another question: can I use UCMA to allow sharing desktop between the web site user and communicator user?

Thanks!

Gary

 

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XIII

Answer 5

Gary,

One other way to do anonymous chats from a website would be to have your code use an application endpoint and do impersonation. You can have it impersonate a fake SIP URI (maybe with a GUID as the user ID) for each person that uses the chat feature.

Michael

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Michael Greenlee | linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgreenlee | blog: http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/michael_greenlee/default.aspx

Answer 6

Hi all!

Excuse me for my questions, but...

I'm reading the documents  miamiocs2007 sent by starting with the "Getting Started" and I don't know if that's a complex solution for what I need (maybe not.. but I'm getting dizzy..).

What I need is to have a simple web page inside my portal where the logged user can interact with another one in charge of giving help to users.

This functionality will access our corporate OCS server. Right now I can access my company OCS in web mode (by having its web version URL).

Are we talking about the same things or may I have to move to another forum? I just need an application where I can call the service to send messages to someone and receive from him.

Help me please...

 

 

Answer 7

There is nothing available "out of the box" for OCS to allow you to embed a chat page or frame into your web site.  The sample of using WCF to expose services implemented from a UCMA application is a starting point for that functionality, but you will need to customize it for your use.

 

 

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Oscar Newkerk Consultant Oscarnew Consulting

Answer 8

mgreenlee,

as you said, we can use impersonation to create a fake sip uri that isn't the original sip uri endpoint of the caller. It is possible to impersonate  a fake sip uri that isn't in the trusted AD of OCS Front End? its possible to impersonate a sip uri outside a conversation to allow presence information of the created fake sip uri? How the callee views the impersonated sip uri? its possible to an endpoint impersonate many fake sip uri's and the real ocs users view their presence? and ocs real users can start a conversation with that impersonated sip uris?

 

Thank you.

Answer 9

Telmo, let me answer your questions.

1. Yes, you can put any uri you want when you're impersonating.
2. No impersonation only occurs on a conversation.
3. The remote user sees the impersonated URI.
4. No, impersonation only occurs on a conversation.
5. No, impersonation occurs at the conversation level not the endpoint level.

Answer 10

Ahmed Stewart,

 

thanks for your brief and clear responses. So, its impossivel for a caller to start a conversation in Communicator with a fake sip uri impersonated by the callee endpoint? In this case, a web-chat IM tool integrated with OCS, the web application has an unique sip uri to bridge the web users to OCS Communicator users, so it uses impersonation to a OCS real user distinguish the web users. But if a real ocs user want to make a conversation with a web user its impossible?

 

Thank you.

Answer 11

You can have the web user click a button or something similar that would initiate the call but since web users don't sign in, there is no way to have the OCS user initiate the conversation.

Answer 12

UCMA 2.0 or the upcoming UCMA 3.0 is the way to go.

Normaly always the Webuser is always instantiating the conversation. And each conversation has it's own ID. So you can use on registered endpoint for all communications from any webuser to other Communicator users.

We created a product/service enabeling anonymous webchat using UCMA 2.0. See:

http://products.e-office.com/webchat-nl-1?lang=en-US

 

Regards marc

http://unified-communications-development.blogspot.com

Answer 13

Vytru Application Sharing SDK extends Microsoft UCMA SDK to support Lync application sharing desktop calls, enables developers to create an automated sharing/viewing desktop applications. try it http://vytru.com/ucma-content-sharing.html.