Lync / Skype 4 Business Bot

Question

I'd like to create a simple server service that can perform the following tasks:

Retrieve presence info for specified user(s). Send message to specified user.

From what i've been reading, and because i'm siting server side I could choose to use UCMA 5.0? But i'm seeing a lot of push of the new UCWA SDK and working with the UCWA rest services. Is there any particular reason why i would use UCWA server side rather than just the UCMA API? I read that UCWA will, in the future, be support by Microsoft for Cloud --- Any input and experiences shared on this would be great.

Thanks, mike

Answer 1

UCWA will be at some point be supported in Office 365 indeed. So if you create an application with UCWA you can expect it will run in the next future on your S4B On-Prem as well as on Office 365. I have to say anyway this support for UCWA on 365 is already long awaited, and still there's no official announcement about availability date.

A very good reason to choose UCWA instead of UCMA, also in case of server automation, is the much simpler deployment of UCWA (UCMA deployment is quite tough).

UCMA must run on a Windows Server OS which joins the S4B farm basically (thus sits in your DMZ) UCWA can run on any device that 'speaks' HTTP. Your UCWA App can run, for instance, on a Raspberry Pi

I think this is a huge difference, for sure it is for your system administrator

Answer 2

Old thread, but in my experience, writing server-side code with UCMA is somewhat easier than trying to use UCWA - and all that UCWA really is is a UCMA application sitting on your Lync/S4B server with a REST wrapper.

For the fairly simple use-case you've described, you could write the service as a client-endpoint UCMA application, which avoids the rather irritating Lync/S4B topology changes and deployment headaches that Massimo alludes to for a TrustedApplication. In this configuration, you are essentially just a third-party client, and you provide the credentials to sign into Lync/S4B as a specified user. Under this scenario, the only requirements are that the server running your application needs to be joined to your domain, run a 64-bit Windows OS, and have the UCMA runtime installed.

Some sort of API support for Skype for Business on Office365 is badly needed. There was some promises of a UCMA-like SDK for Office 365, but it has been more than six months with no hints of an actual release.