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instant-messagingemoticonsucwa

Enable smilies/emoticons in UCWA Chat application

I have built a web application which provides simple text chatting. I have used the UCWA API provided by Microsoft to implement this Instant Messaging chat application.

My next step is to enable usage of smilies/emoticons in the chat application. I have gone though the ucwa documentation https://ucwa.lync.com/documentation

But i have not found a way to enable usage of smilies/emoticons.

My query is: Does UCWA API support usage of smilies/emoticons? If yes, how do we enable in our chat application. If No, how can we add smilies/emoticons into a web application?

Any sort of links or any clues would be really helpful. Thanks in Advance.

Solution

  • Simple Answer

    Most Smilies/Emoticons are a translation of a string of characters into a visible image.

    Examples:

    • :) ==> Smiley Face
    • (bah) ==> Sheep

    UCWA has no knowledge of the image assets nor would you want it tossing around image data when in most cases a textual representation would result in a smaller response message. There is no native support.

    Smilies/Emoticons that appear in Lync Client are a result of the application translating the string into an image resource. If you were to send a :), Lync Client should translate it to a Smiley Face.

    What can I do?

    • Translate local display of supported Smilies/Emoticons to their image counter parts. (Probably the easiest)
    • Support sending of Html messages and send the Smilie/Emoticon and hope the receiving participant can access the image resource defined in an tag. (Probably the worst idea)
    • Make use of Emoji since UCWA is able to send/receive UTF encoded messages. Consider extensive testing to make sure that deployed environments can correctly display the results!