Courtesy of Microsoft

Feb 3, 2009 12:30 GMT  ·  By

In parallel with the delivery of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 the Redmond company has also made available for download the Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 SDK. Defined as the middle-tier application programming interface for Office Communications Server 2007 R2, the Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 is designed to permit applications not only to access but also to control Microsoft’s Enhanced Presence information, instant messaging, telephone and video calls as well as audio/video conferencing. With the SDK, developers can take advantage of the managed-code platform in order to build apps with both text and speech conversation and collaboration capabilities.

Available for download in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants, the UC Managed API 2.0 supports middle-tier apps not only for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 but also for Office Communicator 2007 R2. The managed-code platform comes to the table with a media stack and speech engines that can be leveraged in scenarios involving automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech synthesis (TTS).

According to the Redmond company, the SDK along with the Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 and the ASR and TTS engines enable a wide range of applications to be developed including Interactive Voice Response platforms, but also speech servers, Automated Call Distributors, Conferencing Services, and even client gateways. Developers have at their disposal the UCMA 2.0 Core SDK, the UCMA 2.0 Speech API and the UCMA 2.0 Workflow API.

Microsoft's Adarsh Khare enumerated some of the high-level features that developers will be able to see with the new releases of the Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 SDK:

- ServerPlatform with TLS connectivity and in-built connection management,

- Fully baked endpoint API, which supports trusted ApplicationEndpoint and regular UserEndpoint,

- Better Presence publication and subscribe APIs, which abstract previous SipSubscription class to LocalOwnerPresence and RemotePresence classes,

- ContactGroupServices class exposes Contact/Group management APIs ,

- Multiparty, multimodal Conversation model, which enables multi-modal, multi-party conversation,

- Conversation escalation, where simple 2 party call could be escalated to multiparty conference and add new madality in existing conversation,

- ConferenceManagementServices class exposes API to schedule, modify, schedule conference,

- In built support for Audio (AudioVideoCall) and IM (InstantMessagingCall), all SDP negotiation is handled under the cover,

- In addition to number of How-to samples, a fully working sample for ACD (skill based automatic call distribution)

- ClientPlatform to simulate client scenarios for testing purposes.

Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 SDK is available for download here.