Where did the communicator API go with Lync 2013 for VBA? - vba

Prior to Lync 2013, there was a reference you could use for connecting Lync/Communicator to VBA:
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 API Type Library
This allowed you to write code such as:
Dim msgr As CommunicatorAPI.Messenger
Dim msg As CommunicatorAPI.IMessengerConversationWndAdvanced
You could then write code to manipulate Lync such as generating IMs, etc.
I have recently "updated" Office to 2013. However, all code such as the above no longer works and it appears the required dll is not included in the Lync 2013 installation. VBA complains as the reference is not found.
Downloading the Communicator 2007 SDK does not allow me to load the reference. I suspect I could rewrite all that code to treat this as a standard dll (maybe?).
What file do I need to reference with Lync 2013?

I did award a bounty to this question - but have since read 2 posts on MSDN Social that suggest MS have stopped supporting the automation PI for Lync.
The closest thing I could find is a quote from this page
"Lync 2013/SfB 2015 does not expose COM entry points that Excel can use.
You can create a wrapper around the Lync 2013 SDK and expose some COM objects that could be used from Excel."

Related

"Sideload" an App for Office programatically on the Desktop

I'm not sure whether "sideloading" is the correct term: Is therea an API to programatically install an Office Javascript API based add-in (e.g. a Task Pane app) in to the current / specific document on the desktop (at least on Windows)?
VisualStudio does this when you debug an App for Office project. How do I go about achieving the same?
There is no current way to programmatically insert an app (now "Office Add-in") into a document via JavaScript. It is a scenario that the product group is aware of, but it's not something we have yet.
You can insert an it via the Open XML SDK (which is actually how Visual Studio does this), but that would be .NET code running outside of the Office add-in (and not on the currently open document). Visual Studio in particular is atually inserting an app registered into the special local registry-based "Developer Store", but I can't think of any reason why wouldn't work for an actual Office-Store or SharePoint App Catalog-hosted app. If you are interested in going this route, let me know, and I might be able to find some pointers on the code you'd need to write.
Finally (though it probably goes without saying), you can insert an app into a Template, rather than a regular document. That way, anyone creating a document from that template would get your add-in -- I believe that's what the Paypal Invoicing add-in in Excel does, for example.
Hope this helps,
~ Michael Zlatkovsky, Developer on Office Extensibility team, MSFT

VB Outlook Addin to transfer email information

I am attempting to create an add-in for outlook for where i work. The department in question use an in house built database application with a microsoft access front end built in vba.
Currently the team copy and paste information into the system. I have been tasked with creating an addin that will copy the necessary information such as
email address the email was sent from
Date & Time it was sent
message body
I have created the ribbon and have a button in place that currently displays "hello World".
Could anyone tell me how to get VB to read the information from the message? I have done some research on the internet but cannot find much information on this particular topic.
I would suggest you start here. This talks about how to do a lot of things with outlook using interop, which is the way you will need to work with it from a .Net addin.
How Do I... Outlook PIA Reference

Lync API for VBA in excel

I need to send instant messages automatically from excel. I know how to do it, but I have a problem with Lync API. I have Office 2010 and Lync 2013 and I cannot find in references in VBA editor anything related to Lync or Communicator. I went through all pages and I find almost impossible to solve this and find correct API to use. I downloaded from MSDN portal communicatorAPI.dll, but it is not working. Do you know how to solve this? Thank you a lot.

GetUserAvailability from Exchange from a COM Outlook addin

I have a COM Outlook addin programmed in C++ (VS2005). I'm trying to see if within this addin I can get a random user or resource and see if it is available during a certain meeting time. Basically I'm trying to do something like getuseravailability() from the 2007 Exchange Web Service api listed below.
getuseravailability
Is this the only way to get this information? I've been looking through CDO, ADSI, MAPI and the Outlook object model but can't find anything else like it. I'm avoiding using web services because the Exchange Servers I run against may not have it enabled/ may not be Exchange 2007. And also, I'm hoping for a COM api easily integrated with the existing Outlook COM addin, was really hoping for an OOM solution.
Am I wrong or would the webservices sdk require .net to be installed on the machine running the addin as well?
I believe I've found a way to do this with CDO. Will be trying a sample app for this to see if it does what I think it does.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms870482%28EXCHG.65%29.aspx
I didn't find this earlier because the MSDN library's default view doesn't easily let you browse through the table of contents for a section. You have to go into MSDNs preferences and choose "Classic View" to get the table of contents view on the left.

Is it possible to develop a chat plugin like Gtalk for outlook?

My company uses outlook as the email client and we login to an exchange server. Out address book (not individual contacts) has all the users connected to our company network.
Our company dont have IM ;-( .. I am thinking about developing an outlook plugin like Gmail's Gtalk . is this possible(technically)? Or how difficult it is? Will I be able to get the list of all users (from address book) who have opened their outlook so that I can show them in the online list?
Can I do this without a DB (just sent the message to the recepient and show them)?
Outlook development is new for me and the links in this question did not help me much (very confusing). Where can I get some basic tutorials to begin with?
Edit: I have worked with VBA in outlook. So if the above can achieved using VBA the it would be great ;-) Is that possible?
VBA is an old method of building Office plug-ins and has since been replaced with just a more straight forward VB/C# module coding method. VBA plugins from Office 2003 should work alright in Office 2007, but it's no longer the suggested method if you're looking at Office 2007 + 1.
If you're using Visual Studio 2005, look for information on the Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Second Edition add-on on MSDN. If you're on Visual Studio 2008, the VSTO packages should come with the Professional editions (or higher) by default. It'll have all the templates for building add-ons for the Office suite. Going with this new direction of coding add-ons, anything should be possible.
I've personally never tried to make any sort of server/client solution, so I'm not helpful on that front, but I thought I'd put that information out there for you to consider in your planning stage of making the chat solution.
As a note, the non-individual (Exchange) address book is also known as the Global Address List (GAL).
Outlook 2010 includes instant messaging:
Use instant messaging services with Outlook
Microsoft Outlook can be used with several instant messaging services.
You can tell if your contacts are available for a real-time online
chat, audio and video conferencing, or file sharing.
Note Online status is available for any person whose instant
messaging e-mail address that you have added to your instant messaging
contact list. In addition, online status is shown for people using
Microsoft Office Communicator, regardless of whether they are on your
instant messaging contact list.