The Microsoft® Office Communicator Automation API contains a set of COM interfaces, objects, events, enumerated types, and other related programming entities. With Office Communicator Automation API, you can program a Communicator instance from a third-party application, as well as extend and customize user experiences with Communicator.

For example, you can sign into Communicator by calling the IMessenger::Signin method. This is similar to signing in from a running Communicator instance by clicking Sign In on the Connect menu. In addition, Communicator features can be integrated into other applications and extended or customized for special application needs. A scheduling application can use Office Communicator Automation API to leverage its contact management and query features, so that users can organize, display, or query their contacts.

As a COM-based API supporting Automation, Office Communicator Automation API can be called from applications written in Microsoft Visual Basic®, C/C++, C#, VBScript, and many other scripting languages. For security reasons, some API calls are disabled for scripting languages. For a full description of these restrictions, see Office Communicator Automation API Reference.

With the help of the System.Runtime.Interop namespace in.NET Framework, the API can also be called from applications written in any of the .NET-based programming languages, including the Microsoft Visual C#® development tool, Visual Basic .NET, the Visual J#® development tool, and others. In this document, C# code snippets are used extensively for the purpose of illustration.

In This Section

Terminology for Office Communicator Automation API

Key terms used in this document.

Architecture of Communicator Applications

An overview of applications using Office Communicator Automation API.

Object Model of Communicator Automation API

An overview of the Office Communicator Automation API object model.

Scenarios of Communicator Applications

A brief enumeration of some application scenarios in which Office Communicator Automation API is useful.

See Also