Thursday, January 19, 2012

Integrating Communications into Your Applications Using the Lync API



The Lync API object model exposes extensibility points that allow developers to build applications that interact with the running instance of the Lync client. You can use the Lync API to programmatically sign a user into the Lync client and handle events for changes in its state. You can also start a conversation, add participants, handle conversation and participant events, and add contextual data to the conversation.
You can use the Lync API to create subscriptions on attributes of contacts in your contact list; for example, to track when the availability of a particular contact changes. The Lync API also provides functionality to modify attributes of users signed in to Lync, such as changing their presence or publishing a personal note or location.
Like the IMessenger API, the Lync API includes automation: the ability to start conversations in different modalities (such as instant message or audio/video) with a very small amount of code. The functionality in automation simply invokes the necessary Lync user interface elements, such as a Lync conversation that includes the Application Sharing modality so that a user can share her desktop with another user. Because it is dependent on Lync user interface elements, the functionality in automation is not available when the Lync client is running in UI Suppression mode.
In conjunction with the Lync controls, you can use the Lync API to easily add communications functionality into Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Forms applications. For example, you can spruce up a customer relationship management (CRM) application by integrating presence and click-to-call functionality, allowing users to accomplish their work without needing to switch back and forth between the application and the Lync client.

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