Category Archives: Network/Hardware

A lot of companies force their employees to use Office Communicator at work because people get instant reply like the Blackberry. They call this new strategy “unified messaging” basically slowly replacing regular phone via VOIP using communicator. I don’t like it, but what can you do? Especially if you are working from home, sometimes you want to do your own thing while leaving the work laptop on. At the same time, you want to let your teammates/boss know that you are always “Available” on Office Communicator, how can you do that? Problem with the Office Communicator is that, it will go to “Away” mode after certain time interval. It does not look good on you.

Analysis of problem

Microsoft actually hides the OPTION menu pretty well, see the picture below actually you have to click on the very small icon on the TOP-LEFT corner. Then you can bring up the option menu and “can” change the “idle time” and the “inactive” time. In my test, I changed mine to 60 min. However, this has no effect at all and it doesn’t work! There must be something else like group policy that overrides this value. A lot of companies actually lock down this option for general users, you may not even able to see this option at all.

Solution 1: Low-tech 5 min solution

This solution is good for those who are not that technical, especially for those don’t have Administrator privileges to install any software on the laptop. In my proof of concept, I got a very old solar powered head nodding desktop toy from basement (Only $5 on ebay if you don’t have it). Then, I cut a small piece of aluminum foil tape and taped it on the back of the head. Since I have an optical mouse, the head nodding action generates enough movement for the mouse to move due to reflection! It works like a charm – I am always Available on Communicator.

Solution 2: Simulate mouse/keyboard movement

There are APIs in Windows that you can call to smiluate the mouse/keyboard movement, using User32.dll. I wrote a simple Windows Form application but it just didn’t work for Office Communicator for some reasons. I think it is becuase of .NET which is not low level enough.

Next, my friend Michael suggested me to use a tool called AutoIt v3, I read the documentation and found that it is an extremely powerful automation scripting tool. Probably QA/Admin people use this a lot, the syntax is BASIC alike, so anyone can start writing scripts right away.

Always Available and Auto Reply to messages

After playing with it for few hours, I created a script not only can make you always available, but it can also auto reply to your coworkers!

To use it, download and install AutoIt v3 (freeware) on your laptop, then save the following source code as “AlwaysOnOfficeCommunicator.au3″. Everytime you want it to run, simply double click the .au3 file and it should appear on your system tray. To pause/stop the script, do it on the system tray.

You need to configure the script for the names of your coworkers to be replied automatically, I made it easier so that it accepts partial name that matches the communicator name list (e.g. Peter Laboska, you can use “Peter” or “Laboska”). Note that Auto Reply uses the name you choose as greeting, if you use first name, it will reply as “Peter, I am on the phone now, I will get back to you ASAP.” Otherwise, it will use last name and it may sound odd. Of course, you can modify the script and take away the greeting if you like.

Download: AlwaysOnOfficeCommunicator.au3 (Right-click, Save Target As)

Source Code: (The script is totally free to use/distribute as long as you keep the copyright line)

; Always available and Auto-Reply on Microsoft Communicator
;
; (1) Simulate mouse movement to make status always available
; (2) Auto-Reply for specific coworkers when they message you
;
; Written and Copyrighted by: Mythos and Rini
; Created on: 2010-03-03
;
; Required: AutoIt Version: 3.0
; Tested on: Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1 with
;            Office Communicator 2007 R2
;
 
#include 
 
; This script requires full Administrative rights (Windows Vista)
#requireadmin
 
; ** Setup your name of your coworkers in array below **
; Array of coworkers, AutoIt has no class/type/list, so use Array
;
; [x] - Name of your coworker matches Communicator's Window
; [y] - Flag 0/1 indicating if this has been replied or not
;
; One message is supported here but it is very easy for you to
; modify this to have personalized message for each person
 
Dim $num = 3
Dim $coworkers[$num][2] = [["Peter",0], ["Ken",0], ["Michael",0]]
Dim $message = "I am on the phone now, I will get back to you ASAP."
 
; Use AutoIt WindowsInfo or Microsoft Spy++ to get the class name
$IMClassName="[CLASS:IMWindowClass]"
 
; Move Mouse to 0,0
MouseMove(0, 0, 0)
 
; Loop forever until being stopped manually
While 1=1
 
  ; Random coordinates
  $x=Random(0,800)
  $y=Random(0,600)
  MouseMove($x, $y, 50)
 
  ; Get all the active/minimized communciator windows
  $winList = WinList($IMClassName)
 
  For $a = 0 to $winList[0][0]
     ; Debug
     ; MsgBox(0, "Title", $winList[$a][0])
 
     ; Activate Communicator window if there is any
     If WinActivate($winList[$a][0]) <> 0 Then
 
        ; Get title from IM
        $title = WinGetTitle($winList[$a][0], "")
 
        ; Loop thro all coworkers
        For $r = 0 to UBound($coworkers) - 1
	   ; Debug
	   ; MsgBox(0, "Title",  $coworkers[$r][0])
 
	   ; Send message if name matches + message hasn't been sent
	   If StringInStr($title, $coworkers[$r][0])>0 And $coworkers[$r][1]=0 Then
	      Sleep(1000)
	      Send($coworkers[$r][0] & ", " & $message)
	      Send("{Enter}")
	      $coworkers[$r][1] = 1
	   EndIf
	Next
     ENdIf
  Next
 
  ; Sleep for 20 seconds
  Sleep(20000) 
 
WEnd

Solution 3: Registry Change

Thanks to Stefan leaving the comment to suggest this solution. In Microsoft TechNet forum, there is an thread talks about that. Quote: “You can set this via the MOC client (Tools \ Options \ Personal Tab \ Status Section) and you can also set the registry entries:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\AwayThreshold
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\IdleThreshold

” End Quote.

If you have read the beginning of this article, I tested similar value change in Communicator Options > Status and it didn’t work. This MAY work for some of you because not all companies have group policy set. In my case, it didn’t work for me because of possible Group Policy overrides the values. Even without group policy, a smart network administrator can also reset these values every time you login to your computer via login script.

Other Alternatives

In fact, Microsoft has released the API, search for “Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 SDK” and “Microsoft Unified Communicator Client API SDK”. In theory, you can write your own communicator client and do whatever automation you want. Even without the API you can send fake status to the Communicator server via HTTP on raw socket, however you need to gain the server’s trust by SSL negotiation with encrypted messages. Well, I wouldn’t waste my time on either of these.

Related Useful Files for AutoIt

(1)  Always On Mouse Only: If you don’t want the over complicated auto-reply solution, here is the simple solution that simply  simulates the mouse moment randomly on the screen to make the status always available:

Download: AlwaysOnMouseOnly.au3 (Right-click, Save Target As)

(2) Always On Outlook Web App: In my “work from home” cases, sometimes I don’t want to connect to corporate VPN (I don’t want them to track my web surfing) . The downside is that I lose my Outlook connection.  In order to have quick reply to coworkers and pretend you are working very hard (iPhone/Blackberry is not convenient especially if you want to attach files),  I want to keep Outlook Web App opened and this script makes the session never expired by sending “F5″ contineously to the browser:

Download: AlwaysOnOutlookWebApp.au3 (Right-click, Save Target As)

(3) Shut Down Live Meeting after X minutes: In the office, sometimes I am  being forced to participate in Live Meetings.  I use this script to pretend I am attending the meeting but physically I am not there and gone out for a walk on the street. For example, the meeting is scheduled to be 1 hour, usually last 10 minutes will be Q&A, so I set the delay variable to be 50-55 minutes and it will shut down around Q&A time.  You have to make sure that you are NOT the key person where questions will be asked, otherwise you will be screwed.

Download: ShutDownLiveMeeting.au3 (Right-click, Save Target As)

Urban Legend: Americans spent millions of dollars developing a pen that works in Space (zero gravity), while on the other hand, Russians didn’t have that money. So, how did they solve the problem? The answer is: using pencil.