#59 Support for Lync 2013 Persistent Chats

[Stefano Girolimetti]

Hello,

I am struggling to understand whether SIPE currently supports or, plans to support, the new Persistent Chat functionality introduced in Microsoft Lync 2013. It seems clear to me that SIPE already supports the Group Chat functionality that was available in Microsoft Lync 2010.

Basically, my colleagues running Windows have been automatically upgraded to Lync 2013, and they have created a new Persistent Chat for our team. I run Pidgin 2.10.7 + SIPE 1.15.0 on Linux, and I haven't figured out a way to join this new Persistent Chat.

If I go to Buddies -> Join Chat -> Room List, I only seen old rooms created under 'Microsoft Lync 2010 Group Chat' (and I can join them just fine).

So before doing further troubleshooting, I wanted to understand whether SIPE currently supports Persistent Chats created under Lync 2013 (and if it does, how do you join them?).

I can provide any data you may need and I will respond quickly.

Thanks for your work on this project.

Stefano

[Stefan Becker]

First time I hear about this feature. So short story: not implemented, not planned.

Quick googleing didn't reveal any protocol documentation either. OCS2007 Group Chat protocol already wasn't documented, so I wouldn't get my hopes up (see [feature-requests:#39] for the whole story)

[Stefano Girolimetti]

Gotcha.
Can this be left open to track this enhancement request?
Also, should I look for logs that may help you, like it was done in #39?

Thanks,
Stefano

[Stefan Becker]

I would suggest to create a test account and then create the same kind of log as in [#39]. Using a test user makes sure that you get less unrelated junk and your "private" discussions into the log.

The log would clarify if this is a XCCOM extension or a new protocol feature.

[Sergey]

Hello.
Microsoft has published a protocol description for lync persistent chat 2013
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj683096.aspx

[Stefan Becker]

Thanks for the link, but that document is just a high-level description.

As far as I can see that the only difference between OCS2007R2 group chat and Lync 2013 persistent chat is a new SIP URI you need to subscribe to: CO GRUU@<domain> (the graphics on that page is hard to read). After that it is the same XCCOS protocol that is already implemented in SIPE.

The good news is that M$ has finally documented XCCOS: [MS-XCCOSIP], which will help a lot.

So: who on this thread is willing to provide a test account needed for the implementation?

[Stefan Becker]

Thanks to Sergey I have now been able to confirm that Lync 2013 Persistent Chat uses the same XCCOS protocol as OCS2007R2 Group Chat.

The difference is that the group chat server URI is no longer hard-coded to ocschat@<domain>, but configurable. I think this has been introduced so that different users can be assigned to different isolated group chat servers, depending on access rights. It might even be that a user can be assigned to multiple group chat servers.

Now we only have to figure out how to find this SIP URI from the data provisioned by the server.

[Stefan Becker]

Git commit d7251ae updates to code to request & extract the default persistent chat pool URI. If it is provided by the server, we use that in the group chat initialization instead of ocschat@<domain>.

On the test account I can now see the room list and can enter peristent chats.

Please test and give feedback if we can close this feature request.

[Stefano Girolimetti]

It works beautifully :) No issues or crashes seen so far. Thanks a lot!

[Stefano Girolimetti]

Okay, I take back the bit about no crashes. pidgin segfaults pretty regularly every couple of minutes when using persistent chats. Should I just send the core and backtrace to the pidgin guys, or would you like to have a look first?

[Stefano Girolimetti]

Per one of my colleagues:

They call the sipe_dialog_find function, which may return null... later the sip_transport_info function tries to dereference the dialog pointer, and therefore crashes.

He should post more soon.

[Stefan Becker]

I had noticed a crash too. Please try commit b4ee03d which adds Session-Expires: handling for the group chat session.

I'm closing this is feature request.

[Sergey]

Great, Lync 2013 chat works! But pidgin client does not receive chat history from the server.

[Stefan Becker]

Chat hietory was never implemented.

[Stefan Becker]

Chat history has now been implemented in git commit 6719af7

[mrfreeman]

Thanks a lot for working on this.
There is another minor bug with the feature. It is not possible to send multiline formated text for some reason.
To reproduce - paste some multiline text to the chat window and the message will never be sent and eventually will timeout. MS Lync clients are naturally able to do so, so I believe there is something with the SIPE plugin that prevents it from functioning correctly.

[Stefano Girolimetti]

That's correct. For example, copying and pasting this into the chat will fail:

Test0 :)
Test1 :D
Test2 :P
Test3 :O