LiveSide - News blog : IM Control

Messenger Control Helps People Find Jobs!

Sunshine — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:36:00 GMT

How would you like it if your future boss (or a recruiter) would contact you on Messenger? It can happen if you are in Latin America and submitted your resume to www.Bumeran.com. Subscribers there can now associate their Bumeran account with their Windows Live ID. Next when recruiters are browsing the resumes they can click the presence icon next to the candidate they are interested in to start a conversation.

All this is without the need of adding that candidate to their contact list or knowing his/her Live ID by the way!

Looks like more and more businesses are starting to see the added value the IM control can bring to their sites. The first we reported on that put it to good use is the Dutch Microsoft ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) Team. In August 2008 a billion requests a month with Windows Live Presence API was reached already!

Windows Live Messenger Developer Blog : Messenger Control Helps People Find Jobs!

P.S. To those looking for/missing Messenger Presence on here: we haven't re-implemented it yet.

IM Control: LiveSide posts non-Mesh news; world does not end

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:26:47 GMT

If we didn’t know better, we’d say our friend Angus Logan was jealous. Wants us to change our name, even. Apparently in a blatant attempt to get his name back on LiveSide, he posted on some cool improvements to the Messenger IM control – that’s the one that allows you to put a “chat box” on your website and have conversations with your readers. The improvements now allow you get an idea of where an IM message coming from your IM control is coming from, with a default “inviterDisplayName” parameter.

Colin Brown (Hackersoft) has written some helpful how-to articles for us on setting up the IM control, and even how to use it to create a Help Desk application for your site:

Windows Live Messenger Web Controls – Part 1

Windows Live Messenger Web Controls – Part 2

Cheap and Easy Online Helpdesk

Windows Live Messenger IM Control getting popular and put to good use!

Sunshine — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 22:01:00 GMT

The use of Windows Live Messenger IM Control is getting more and more popular. Angus Logan just posted on his blog that the Dutch Microsoft ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) Team is putting it to good use. ALM describes methods to manage software development and IT initiatives by automating the process from end to end, and integrating the information from the various steps. Integration provides consistency and accuracy and also introduces opportunities for automation. The Dutch team has a page where Dutch citizens can speak (IM) directly with one of the ALM experts. All they have to do is click the Messenger status icon in front of their names to open an Instant Messaging window and start chatting. Help on the fly, how cool is that?

You too can add the Windows Live Messenger IM Control to your website, Angus Logan has a step-by-step HowTo on his blog. It's quite easy to do.

Previous LiveSide posts on this subject:
Messenger Presence Feature - Coming Soon
Windows Live Messenger IM Control launched

Now to incorporate it on your website, as we have on LiveSide, allowing your users to show their Messenger Presence is a different story. Scott pointed towards MSDN documentation about this in his article Inviting Users to Share Online Presence. He also wrote a Windows Live Writer plugin to add someone else's online presence as a link in a blog entry: Insert IMMe Link Plugin (handy if you need to show your team's Messenger presence).

Speaking of Messenger presence, you can easily share your Messenger presence with registered LiveSide users right from our homepage. Just click in the upper right for instructions.

Windows Live Messenger IM Control launched

Gregor — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:20:00 GMT

Back in September at MIX UK we got a first look at a Messenger presence feature. Today marks the release of this handy little addition to the Messenger family. But what does Windows Live Messenger IM Control actually do? Easiest way to find out is to take a look at the team blog post:

The Windows Live™ Messenger IM Control lets people on the Web reach you in Messenger by showing your Messenger status on your web site, blog, or social networking profile. The Windows Live™ Messenger IM Control runs in the browser and lets site visitors message you without installing Messenger first. The IM Control is supported in IE6, IE7, and Firefox 2.0 on Windows and Firefox 2.0 on Mac OS. The IM Control is supported in 32 languages.

So how does this work? First you got to http://settings.messenger.live.com/applications/websettings.aspx, sign-in with your Live ID and enable the feature (so people that do not want to use this will never be bothered by people they do not know). Then you can either choose a simple status icon (that will link to a webpage where you can then start a conversation) or the web IM control itself that can be added to your blog or website. For Windows Live Spaces this requires a Custom HTML module right now but I imagine that you will eventually be able to simple choose the IM Control from the existing module list or that it will even be integrated in all of the contact cards that are used on Windows Live Spaces, etc.

When someone wants to talk to you he either has to sign in with his Live ID or as a Visitor (name can be modified) and has to pass a HIP verification (the ones with letters and numbers, also called captcha) before he can send you a message in order to avoid spam.

Angus Logan has more info and a detailed walkthrough over on his blog.

Messenger Presence Feature - Coming Soon

ScottIsAFool — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:36:52 GMT

At Mix UK Danny Thorpe and Angus Logan gave us a first look at a new feature that's coming soon, dubbed Messenger Presence. Users of the Web2Messenger service will already be familiar with the concept of this, as basically it means you can set up your account to allow anonymous messages from the web, which people would send to you from a "Messenger window" on your website/blog.

When the feature becomes available, you would go to the settings page on the net for it and select that you would like to enable this feature, you can then create the html that will go on your website/blog. This will allow people to see when you're online and allow them to then start up a conversation with you.

So what does all this look like? This:

So from those we can see the procedure that has to be taken for someone to start a conversation with you using the web client on your website/blog. But what does that look like from your end?

We get an anonymous addressed contact sending you a message. What you can then do is start having a full conversation with this person if you choose:

Now, this isn’t going to be for everybody. Because you will be allowing people to start a conversation with you via the web you are opening up your Messenger service to show your presence Anonymously and receive messages.

Update: Apparently this will be called Messenger IM Control