In the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowlings, the Weasley family has a very special clock that shows the presence of each of the family members. The clock has nine hands, one for each member of the family, and each hand points to a location or status of the family: Home, School, Work, Travelling, Lost, Hospital, Prison, and Mortal Peril.
Presence status = Busy composing a blog entry
Perhaps the Weasley's clock displays different than the presence statuses from those available in Microsoft Office Communicator and other unified communications software, but it displays presence nonetheless.
And in Harry Potter, by the sixth book, all nine hands point to mortal peril at all times, except when someone is travelling. I am pretty sure that mortal peril cannot be seen as a good sign in any definition of presence.
Seeing the Weasley clock reminded me of how my "Tanjay" phone (really a LG Nortel 8540 or Polycom CX700) sitting in my home office similarly displays my status to my family members while my Tanjay phone in my downtown office displays my status to my colleagues.
This inspired me to create my own "Mortal peril" custom presence status so just in case I was captured by evil minions of Voldemort (the dark lord from the Harry Potter series) or was facing any other unsavory creature I could accurately reflect my current status to my family.
At first I debated as whether this custom status should show as "available" or "busy". While in mortal peril I would certain be available for assistance, in the end, I figured my own status while in the state of mortal peril would likely be "busy" – likely busy trying to save my own bacon!
Here is how my own Weasley-like presence clock would appear if I found myself in mortal peril. Thankfully I have yet to come across a situation which required me to use this custom presence status during a real event.
Creating Custom Presence States
There is an easy way and a less easy way to create customer presence statuses.
If you happen to use Office Communicator Mobile on your BlackBerry then it is easy. In the BlackBerry OC client, you press the menu key, pick "My Status" from the popup menu, then choose "Custom Statuses…" to create a custom status. For each custom status you can specify a title (such as "Mortal Peril") and then whether you want to show the status as Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb, Be Right Back or Away. Custom statuses created on the BlackBerry are available for selection only on the BlackBerry but display on any endpoint (including desktop Office Communicator or Tanjay phones).
Several references suggest you cannot create an "Away" custom status. However, using the BlackBerry client I have certainly verified that I can do exactly this. For example I created a custom Away presence state entitled "In a galaxy far, far away" (as a tribute to the opening text from Star Wars) and this displayed with no issue in both the desktop OC client and on my Tanjay phone.
To create custom presence options with the desktop Office Communicator client, you need to modify registry settings to point to a customized .xml file that describes the custom presence statuses you wish to use.
Specifically, you need to modify the key "CustomStateURL " under the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator" so that the key "CustomStateURL" points to the created XML file (Do a Google search for "CustomStateURL" and you will find plenty of examples.
The customized .xml file needs to look something like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<customStates xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/09/2005/communicator/customStates"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://schemas.microsoft.com/09/2005/communicator/customStates
http://livecommteam/sites/main/ice/Wave%2012%20Docs/CustomActivities.xsd">
<customState ID="1" availability="online">
<activity LCID="1033">Working from Home</activity>
<activity LCID="1044">activity 2 for 1044</activity>
<activity LCID="1055">activity 3 for 1055</activity>
</customState>
<customState ID="2" availability="busy">
<activity LCID="1033">In a Live Meeting</activity>
<activity LCID="1036">Equivalent French String for - In a Live Meeting </activity>
</customState>
<customState ID="3" availability="busy">
<activity LCID="1033">Meeting with Customer</activity>
<activity LCID="1055">meeting with client</activity>
<activity LCID="1036">Equivalent French String for - Meeting with Customer</activity>
</customState>
<customState ID="4" availability="do-not-disturb">
<activity LCID="1033">Interviewing</activity>
</customState></customStates>
The multiple LCID values are only required to support multiple languages in the OC interface – so likely not required in most cases.
Custom presence statuses display in OC underneath the standard presence states.
The BlackBerry client method is easy, the OC client registry "hack" method is less than easy. One could hope that a future OC client would enable the simple approach adopted by the OC BlackBerry client!
With either method, OCS currently limits you to four custom statuses. As far as I know this restriction has not been changed with OCS R2. However with R2, the location of the custom presence XML file can no longer be pointed to using a file:// URL; it must use an HTTPS:// URL. Which makes it slightly more painful.
Note: I have not tested whether a custom "Away" status is supported via the registry key / XML file approach. If anyone has tried this please let me know if this works.
Actual Uses for Custom Presence States
So I've thankfully ruled out "mortal peril" as a useful custom presence state for my own day to day existence.
However, I have found uses for a state entitled "On mobile" as an available state. This lets colleagues know that while I am available, I am not going to be able to do a video conference (this is not a function supported on my current BlackBerry) and perhaps may not be able to IM since I may be driving, although admittedly I have been known to drive and text which is not a recommended activity and is soon to carry stiff fines where I live – and rightfully so as every time I find myself driving and typing I inevitably end up shaking my head wondering what am I doing!
Perhaps a "Mobile and driving" state would be more explicit.
I have also found an available status "On GO Train" which indicates I am currently on the transit system that runs between where I live and downtown Toronto as useful. While on the Go Train, IM is good but given the number of people that are packed into each train car during rush hour, a voice call would likely not be very private.
I would be interested to hear from you regarding custom statuses you have found of use.
Presence status = Available (thankfully not in mortal peril!)
Some useful related links:
Configuring Custom Presence States (MS Technet)
Office Communicator Deployment Guide (see page 21)
I was able to display the custom status on my PC, when I was trying to show the custom status on my Pocket PC (HTC Touch, Communicator Mobile), it was not showing those custom message.
Posted by: Suresh Bonda | July 17, 2009 at 04:20 PM