Any Post starting with this disclaimer means that this post was not written by me however I liked it and added to my blog. I will also include the link to the original or similar post to provide credit to the original author

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb963925.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/toml/archive/2007/11/30/oc-custom-presence-states.aspx 
http://blog.tiensivu.com/aaron/archives/1341-Little-known-Office-Communicator-2007-feature-Custom-Presence-States.html
http://blogs.technet.com/brettjo/archive/2008/08/19/communicator-and-ocs-tech-tip-8-custom-presence.aspx

Office Communicator 2007 offers a few user defined areas, the Note, your location and Custom Presence

Please note something important – there is no defined custom presence that includes the Yellow (away) status. The reason is that it is not supported as it was deemed to be a value that you wouldn’t set yourself but would be set based on your activity. I would agree with that for Away but Be Right Back I can set but it is what it is. What happens if you set one of the states to the Yellow (away) states – none of the custom presence items show.

Another item to note that can be a bit annoying – you can’t sign in with the custom presence, you have to sign in with a standard state and then change. My approach is to pick the state that matches what I will eventually select with my custom text.

Universal limitations

• You can only define up to 4 custom entries.
• Maximum length of the custom presence description is 64 characters.
• XML customState availability can be set to “online”, “busy” and “do-not-disturb”.
• If you want the custom states set for everyone on the computer system instead of the current user, you need to change the .REG file from HKCU to HKLM. (Mostly only useful for TS servers)

Here is syntax for presence.xml used for what you see and a reg file syntax is also included. Please note that you can put the xml anywhere just update the reg file syntax for the correct path.

NOTE: The LCID=”1033″ specify the language of the clients you want the custom presence to be displayed . 1033 is english, if your contacts have clients with different languages you need to find the corresponding language code. See list of locale ID (LCID): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/goglobal/bb964664.aspx You can have multiple languages for the same state so that it works for different clients. If you use the program that you can download at the bottom of this post you need to manually change the LCID in the generated xml

<customStates>
    <customState ID=”1″ availability=”online”>
        <activity LCID=”1033″>Out and about – use mobile</activity>
        <activity LCID=”1044″>Out and about – use mobile</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID=”2″ availability=”Busy”>
        <activity LCID=”1033″>Down in the lab – use mobile</activity>
        <activity LCID=”1044″>Down in the lab – use mobile</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID=”3″ availability=”busy”>
        <activity LCID=”1033″>Reviewing program documents</activity>
        <activity LCID=”1044″>Reviewing program documents</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID=”4″ availability=”do-not-disturb”>
        <activity LCID=”1033″>Executive Briefing with Customer</activity>
        <activity LCID=”1044″>Executive Briefing with Customer</activity>
    </customState>
</customStates>

and here is the syntax of the reg file

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator]
@=””
“CustomStateURL”=file:///C:/Users/toml/Documents/presence.xml

 

 

A program has been written to automate this process

Setting the Pre-Req’s on Vista and MOC R2

Amending the registry:

1) Start –> RegEdit.exe

2) Navigate (by double clicking) to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator

3) Change the EnableSIPHighSecurityMode key name to be 0

4) Right click EnableSIPHighSecurityMode –> Modify –> change it to 0 –> OK

It should look like this:

5) Close the registry editor.

Go here to download the tool: http://www.confusedamused.com/notebook/communicator-2007-custom-presence-tool/