Appear Offline in Microsoft Office Communicator Server 2007

A few customers have been asking on how to get the “Appear offline” status in Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007. Although it is advisable to use the “Do not disturb” status instead of “Appear offline”, since its corporate presence system and not public, however there are options available to make the “Appear Offline” status appear in OCS 2007 clients, if it is more suitable for a certain organization. Remember that it would reduce the value of presence if many of your employees selected the “Appear Offline” status, Moreover, it will also cause your phone calls to go to voice mails.

But if you have decided that this is the option you really need, then you can use the Administrative template called “Communicator.adm” available in your distribution disk and apply it through group policy in the domain. This administrative template has a setting called “EnableAppearOffline” setting which will make the “Appear offline” status available to all your clients.

If you need this setting for only a client or two, you can also use the registry to set this up. The location is Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator where you have to create a DWORD called “EnableAppearOffline” and set it to 1. After this registry setting, you have to sign out of Communicator client and then sign back in to get the status available.

Once again, compare the “Do not disturb” or the “Appear offline” status as which one will be better for your organization’s productivity.