How To: Appear Offline in Office Communications Server 2007

A short break from the UC Case Study to share a tip regarding Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC), the OCS client. One of the things I thought was missing from MOC was the ability to appear offline. This is yet another level of presence where you can initiate conversations but generally people will leave you alone as you seem to be offline. It's a little different than DND, do not disturb. Sometimes you just don't want anyone to know you're there. :p

Anyway, if you're interested, here's how to do it. The easy way is to set it in group policy using the communicator.adm file. However, if you have non-domain-joined systems you'll need to have users set it locally. Open up regedit and navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator and add a DWORD named EnableAppearOffline. Set its value to "1" and you're done. If MOC was already running you'll need to close it and relaunch for the setting to take effect.

Here's how it will look:

• Microsoft
• VoIP / Convergence
• Microsoft
• MOC
• OCS
• Office Communications Server
• offline