Description

A common request from Lync and Skype for Business users over the years is to be able to set Lync/Skype for Business presence based on rules. And a common rule is time. So, set my presence to ‘away’ at 5pm every weekday. Well, as is usually the case, the community was listening, and Andrew Morpeth (@AndrewMorpeth), fellow Skype for Business MVP, released a free solution called UC Extend.

UC Extend allows you to set various time of day presence and personal note changes. For example, you can set a presence of ‘Off work’ to start at 5:30pm until 8:00am. And the personal note can be something like ‘It’s currently outside my normal work hours so I may not respond’. UC Extend forces the configured presence and personal note during this time. So, even if you’re working on your computer, which would normally cause a presence of ‘available’, UC Extend will keep it as ‘Off work’. There are 4 standard ‘rules’ that can be enabled and configured, and they apply to every day. There is also a weekend rule that matches based on the day. So, if your weekend is Saturday and Sunday, from Midnight Friday till midnight Sunday, the configured rule will apply, and takes priority over the other rules. See the screenshot below to see how the application lays out the rules and their settings.

UC Extend has several other options as well, including forcing one UI (Skype for Business/Lync), and automatic ‘away’ settings. Andrew has done some work around also adding configuration of unanswered calls, but those features are not yet available. The right-click context menu for the application also supports custom options and custom URLs that are configured in the applications XML file. I did play around with those, but haven’t really found a need for them yet. Other options include the ability to include custom option in the Lync/Skype for Business context menu, which could be nicer. This includes custom support URLs, as well as the ability to launch an application. UC Extend also supports configuring registry keys in the XML, and forcing a value for those keys, such as when a change is detected. Andrew’s site describes these features further, and the XML file has some decent comment notes.

UC Extend will trigger a toast notification and system sound whenever it makes presence changes. For me, that’s a good ‘reminder’ that the working day is over.

Installation

Download the application from the TechNet Gallery. Run through the MSI installer, and you’re up and running. You can right-click on the ‘UC’ system tray icon to adjust the settings.

Conclusion

The application was released a while ago, and some of the dialogs mentions Lync instead of Skype for Business. The bottom of the settings dialog is an example of this. It doesn’t detect the sign-in status of Skype for Business in that location. But the application works great for Skype for Business clients. I really like the solution, and continue to use it to this day. My only real request, other than updating some of the dialogs to support Skype for Business, is to store the original personal note, so that when it’s outside of any of the configured rules, it can restore that. Or, and option to pick the original personal note instead of forcing a configured personal note. Certainly not a show stopper for me – just a wish. Maybe Andrew will get around to finishing the ‘unanswered calls’ config. Still, a cool solution that fills a known gap.