QueryServiceForStatus (DWORD) for Office Communicator 2007 R2

TIP: As you probably know the DWORD value QueryServiceForStatus is a very special DWORD value in your registry. Sometimes it makes customers happy! By default when setting up a MOSS 2007 (SharePoint) intranet or other topology (extranet, internet) a nice integration feature is showing up. The item where I would like to focus on is the OC ActiveX   control who controls the presence icon in your IE session. When having Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 installed on your local computer presence is shown in SharePoint.

By default SharePoint calls name.dll, which calls MSO.DLL, which in turn calls Communicator or Windows Messenger. For Office 2003 it was always Windows Messenger, which would call Communicator, until SP2 when MSO.DLL started calling Communicator directly. The reg key effects the behavior of MSO.DLL

A registry value is available to configure how Outlook queries for a contact's presence information. You can configure this registry value to determine how Outlook retrieves the online status for contacts who are not on your Windows Messenger contact list.

The issue was showing up last week while doing a large OCS R2 implementation (2k seats).

Case: Customer is using MOSS 2007 as there intranet platform and PowerFuse from Citrix to connect to that.

Process:

• All users connect via PowerFuse (Citrix) to MOSS
• When users open the MOSS intranet they see presence from content managers
• The users are using Office 2003.

Problem: the users see only presence from content managers who are added to the personal contact list of the user.

Question: Is there any way to set this by default:

• where each user who is connecting to the MOSS intranet page is seeing all the presence of the content managers (even when they are not "connected" through mutual acceptance)

Answer: YES! You can control the behavior on how presence is shown in MOSS. Like the same we had with LCS 2003 Microsoft published a article how to change your registry. For more information feel free to read the entire article (recommendation). Here the short to do list:

To modify this behavior, change the QueryServiceForStatus value in the following registry subkey:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\PersonaMenu
• If this registry subkey does not exist, create it. To do this, follow these steps:
• a. Right-click Common, point to New, and then click Key.
• b. In the New Key # 1 box, type PersonaMenu, and then press ENTER.

3. Right-click PersonaMenu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

4. In the New Value # 1 box, type QueryServiceForStatus, and then press ENTER.

5. Right-click QueryServiceForStatus, and then click Modify.

6. In the Value data box, type one of the following values:

• If you type a value of two (2), Outlook requests status information from the Real-Time Communications (RTC) service about people who may or may not be on your contact list.

7. Click OK, and then quit Registry Editor.

Conclusion:

• There are still ways to control how presence is shown in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
• This investigation is a nice add-on on my former investigation on Mutual Acceptance in OCS R2 and how to control that. Read my earlier blogpost.
• The article KB889938 is also effective on Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2.
• This setting is also tested on Citrix with PowerFuse.
• Special thanks to Kyle Marsh (Microsoft) for giving us some insides.

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