Integrating a Third-Party Collaboration Program with Communicator 2007

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will reach end of support on January 9, 2018. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

If your organization uses Microsoft® Office Live Meeting 2007, you can add an online data-sharing session to any Communicator 2007 conversation. You can also integrate Communicator 2007 with any third-party online collaboration program by adding the same registry settings as those used by Live Meeting 2007.

The process for integrating an online collaboration program is similar to that described in the section titled, Adding Commands to the Communicator Menus, earlier in this document. However, additional registry entries must be added for data conferencing and online collaboration. The integration process described here is the one used for Live Meeting 2007, so some of the steps may not apply to other online collaboration programs.

You can use Communicator 2007 to initiate data conferencing sessions hosted on an in-house server, an Internet-based service, or both. The collaboration, or data conferencing, session can be launched from the Contact List, or from an existing instant messaging, voice, or video session. Communicator acts only as the vehicle for starting the program. Any existing Communicator 2007 conversations remain active after the online collaboration session has begun.

The following sections describe how Communicator 2007 is integrated with Internet-based and server-based collaboration programs.

Integrating an Internet-Based Collaboration Program with Communicator 2007

In general, the steps involved in integrating a third-party collaboration program are as follows:

  1. Information about the program is added to the registry, as described in Table 8.

  2. The organizer signs in to Communicator and selects contacts for data sharing and collaboration. Or the organizer may already be in a conversation and decides to add data conferencing.

  3. Communicator 2007 reads the registry, launches the collaboration program, and then sends a custom SIP message—an appINVITE—to the selected participants.

  4. Participants accept the invitation, and the collaboration program is launched on each person's computer. Communicator 2007 uses the registry to determine which collaboration program to use, and then launches that program with the parameters included in the appINVITE message.

Table 8 describes the registry entries necessary to integrate an Internet-based collaboration program with Communicator 2007.

Table 8.   Registry entries for an Internet-based collaboration program

Location Name Type Data

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software
\Microsoft\Communicator
\SessionManager\Apps
\[
GUID of Application]

 

 

 

 

Name

REG_SZ

The program name for Communicator 2007 menus.

 

SmallIcon

REG_SZ

Path to 16-pixel x 16-pixel icon, BMP or PNG.

 

LargeIcon

REG_SZ

Path to 28-pixel x 28-pixel icon, BMP or PNG.

 

Path

REG_SZ

Participant path for launching the online collaboration program.

 

OriginatorPath

REG_SZ

Organizer path for launching the online collaboration program. This path can contain one or more custom parameters as defined in the Parameters subkey. For example, https://meetserv.adatum.com/cc/%param1%/join?id=%param2%&role=present&pw=%param3%

 

SessionType

DWORD

0 = Local session. The application is launched on the local computer.

1 = Two-party session (default). Communicator 2007 launches the application locally, and then sends a desktop alert to the other user. The other user clicks the alert and starts the specified application on their computer.

2 = Multi-party session. Communicator 2007 launches the application locally, and then sends desktop alerts to the other users, prompting them to launch the specified application on their own computer.

 

LiveServerIntegration

DWORD

0 or not present = The application has its own conferencing mechanisms and does not require Office Communications Server 2007 (default).

1 = Integrates with an in-house server.

 

ApplicationType

DWORD

1 = Sets the application type to protocol. The other possible values do not apply in this case. If not present, ApplicationType defaults to 0 (executable).

 

ExensibleMenu

REG_SZ

A list of the menus where this command appears, separated by semi-colons. Possible values are:

MainWindowActions MainWindowRightClick ConversationWindowActions ConversationWindowContextual ConversationWindowRightClick ConversationWindowButton

If ExtensibleMenu is not defined, the default values of MainWindowRightClick and ConversationWindowContextual are used.

 

ButtonPriority

DWORD

0 = Application will be displayed on the button (default).

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\Software\Microsoft
\Communicator\SessionManager
\Apps\Parameters[
GUID of Application]

 

 

 

 

Param1

REG_SZ

Used in tokenized format (%Parm1%) to add user-specific values to the OriginatorPath registry key.

 

Param2

REG_SZ

See Param1.

 

Param3

REG_SZ

See Param1.

The following example registry settings integrate ADatum Collaboration Client with Communicator 2007.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager\Apps]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager\Apps\{C3F6E17A-855F-44a0-B90D-C0B92D38E5F1}]
"Path"="https://meetingservice.adatum.com/cc/%param1%/meet/%param2%"
"OriginatorPath"="https://meetserv.adatum.com/cc/%param1%/join?id=%param2%&role=present&pw=%param3%"
"SessionType"=dword:00000002
"ApplicationType"=dword:00000001
"LiveServerIntegration"=dword:00000000
"Name"="ADatum Online Collaboration Service"
"Extensiblemenu"="MainWindowActions;MainWindowRightClick;ConversationWindowActions;ConversationWindowContextual;ConversationWindowRightClick"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager\Apps]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager\Apps\Parameters]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager\Apps\Parameters\{C3F6E17A-855F-44a0-B90D-C0B92D38E5F1}]
"Param1"="meetserv"
"Param2"="admin"
"Param3"="abcdefg123"

Integrating a Server-Based Collaboration Program with Communicator 2007

The settings to add commands for launching a server-based collaboration program from within Communicator 2007 are similar to those described in the section titled, Integrating an Internet-Based Collaboration Program with Communicator 2007, earlier in this document. However, the OriginatorPath is not required, and some values are changed, as described in Table 9.

Table 9.   Registry entries for a server-based collaboration program

Location Name Type Data

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager\Apps\[GUID of Application]

 

 

 

 

Name

REG_SZ

Name of the application as it appears on the menu.

 

ApplicationType

DWORD

Value = 1. Sets the application type to protocol. The other possible values do not apply in this case. If not present, ApplicationType defaults to 0 (executable).

 

Path

REG_SZ

Protocol used to execute the collaboration program. For Live Meeting 2007, the value of Path is set to meet:%conf-uri%.

 

SessionType

DWORD

0 = Local session. The application is launched on the local computer.

1 = Two-party session (default). Communicator 2007 launches the application locally, and then sends a desktop alert to the other user. The other user clicks the alert and starts the specified application on their computer.

2 = Multi-party session. Communicator 2007 launches the application locally, and then sends desktop alerts to the other users, prompting them to launch the specified application on their computer.

 

LiveServerIntegration

DWORD

1 = Hosted on the in-house server.

 

MCUType

REG_SZ

DATA = The type of server.

 

ExtensibleMenu

REG_SZ

A list of the menus where this command appears, separated by semi-colons. Possible values are:

MainWindowActions MainWindowRightClick ConversationWindowActions ConversationWindowContextual ConversationWindowRightClick

If ExtensibleMenu is not defined, the default values of MainWindowRightClick and ConversationWindowContextual are used.

The following example adds commands to launch ADatum Collaboration Client from within Communicator 2007.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager\Apps]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator\SessionManager\Apps\{27877e66-615c-4582-ab88-0cb2ca05d951}]
"Path"="meet:%conf-uri%"
"SessionType"=dword:00000002
"LiveServerIntegration"=dword:00000001
"ApplicationType"=dword:00000001
"Name"="ADatum Collaboration Client"
"MCUType"="Data"
"Extensiblemenu"="MainWindowActions;MainWindowRightClick;ConversationWindowActions;ConversationWindowContextual;ConversationWindowRightClick"