Working with Application Contacts
In this section, you learn how to work with application contacts in your application.
Applications can access the profile data of a user's application contacts just as it can for a user's Windows Live contacts.
An application has access to Windows Live Messenger properties of a user's application contacts, including status, display name, display picture URL, personal message, and Windows Live profile URL.
 Note: |
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| An application does not have access to the Windows Live ID (e-mail address) for a user's application contact unless the application contact is a Windows Live contact also. |
An application user can instant message with an application contact regardless of where the application contact is signed in. A user who links an account with an application can be contacted even if the user is not currently signed in from the application. For example, an application user can be contacted in the Messenger desktop client by another user in the Web site of the application.
For instant messaging to take place between two application contacts, at least one of them must be currently signed in to the application Web site, unless they are already Windows Live contacts.
When two application contacts have an instant message conversation, they can see each other's status, display name, and personal message, but they do not see each other's Windows Live ID (e-mail address).
Use the UI Controls to take advantage of application contacts, as shown in the following steps.
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Define the application contact list in the app-contacts tag.
See Application Contact List for more details.
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Optionally define application-specific profile data for the signed-in user and application contacts with app-contact tags.
See Application Contact Properties for more details.
If you use the Messenger Web Bar Control and define the application-group-name attribute, all application contacts with the contact-list-enabled attribute set to true will appear in the group named with the value of that attribute.
