Author: Bronwen Zande

This article gives a brief introduction to the Windows Live Messenger IM Control & Presence API.  It provides a walkthrough of how to setup, install and use the control from both an owner and a vistor user perspective.

The Windows Live team have released two controls to allow third parties to interact with users:

Presence API

The Presence API is a Readonly JSON API which returns a user's status, display name and URI to Status Image and can be queried prgramatically.

It falls under the Windows Live Platform terms of usage http://dev.live.com/terms and is under the standard 1 million unique users/mth threshold.

IM Control

The IM Control is a HTML widget that allows a user to publish their Windows Live Messenger presence and provides two way conversation from a web page to a Messenger client.  The control allows anonymous users to see presence and send messages. 

The control is supported in IE6, IE7, and FireFox 2.0 on Windows and FireFox 2.0 on Max OS.  It also supports 32 languages.

It falls under the Windows Live Platform terms of usage http://dev.live.com/terms and is available to unlimited usage without charge.  

Granting Permission to Presence/IM

Both require a user to "opt-in" to display their presence and receive messages . To grant permission :

1. Goto the Messenger WebSettings page http://settings.messenger.live.com/Applications/WebSettings.aspx and sign in with the liveid you wish to grant permission to.

2. Select Allow anyone on the Internet to see my online status and send me messages checkbox and choose save

Note: Children or Family safety users will NOT be allowed to grant permission

Note: This will allow anybody on the Web to see your presence and sed you IM Messages.

Setting up the controls

After you have granted permission, to put the controls on your site:

1. Select Create HTML

2. Choose the control you wish to use

3. Copy the HTML for the selected control and paste into a page on your site. Note: When using HTML to show your messenger status, people can copy the HTML and show elsewhere on the Web.

Note: You need at least 300px wide to display the control properly

Using the IM control

To use the control on a page click "Begin a conversation"

You can choose to talk the the person "anonymously" or sign in with your Windows Live ID

Anonymous users

If you choose to chat as a vistor, after entering you vistor name you will be prompted to enter a captcha.  This is to prevent IM spamming.

Once the user sends a message the receiver will be given the option to allow or deny

After this both parties will see the messages in their respective windows:

Live ID Users

If you choose to chat using your liveid, you will be promted to login

After logging in you will be presented with a captcha. Once you send your mesage the receiver will have the option to allow of block if you aren't on their contact list

Both parties will see the mesasges in their respective windows

Note: When logging in with your Live ID the receive can now see you Live ID email address, and choose the "Add this person to your contact list"

The recevier can now see the user's they have spoken to

Both the IM control and the Presence API have great potential.  You could use the IM control to add a simple "Ask a Salesmen" or "Need support" feature on your site to help customers with a few questions.  Presence would be great on a forum or chatroom to see which of the members are onlline.  The possibilities are endless.