Understanding UI Suppression in Lync 2010 SDK

Use UI suppression in Microsoft Lync 2010 SDK applications to completely hide the Microsoft Lync 2010 UI. UI suppression is useful to support the development of a customized, alternative UI in a Lync SDK application.

Note

UI suppression disables extensibility through the Automation class and Microsoft Lync 2010 Controls.

UI suppression is configured through a registry key. When the key is set, Lync 2010 responds by not initializing the UI layer. When Lync 2010 .exe is started, the associated process runs but the UI is not visible. The Lync 2010 icon does not appear in the Microsoft Windows notification area located to the far right of the task bar or in the Start menu. The Lync 2010 UI can still be accessed using the Microsoft Lync Model API. The UI suppression feature is useful when you want to embed Lync 2010 features in your application and create your own UI to host the Lync 2010 features.

Important

In UI suppression mode, you can only start Lync 2010 from your application by calling the LyncClient.BeginInitialize method on a LyncClient instance. Lync 2010 cannot be started from the Start menu. In addition, if your application initializes Lync 2010, then your application must also call the LyncClient.BeginShutdown method before closing your custom application.

Determining UI Suppression Mode

There are three methods to determine the current UI suppression mode.

  • Check the LyncClient.InSuppressedMode property.

    if (LyncClient.GetClient().InSuppressedMode == true)
    {
        MessageBox.Show("Lync is configured for full UI suppression");
        return;
    }
    
  • Discover the value by trying to get an instance of the Automation class and catching the resulting exception that is raised if UI suppression is enabled.

  • If your computer is a 64-bit computer, read the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Communicator]"UISuppressionMode" key in the local registry and set the value to dword:00000001, otherwise read the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator]"UISuppressionMode" key. The key values are identical for both keys. This method is not supported in Lync SDK.

Setting UI Suppression Mode at Lync Client Install Time

You can set the Lync 2010 suppression mode when you install the Lync client. At the command prompt, start the Lync installation .exe with a command-line argument from the following table.

Argument

Description

/Install

Installs all files.

/Uninstall

Removes all files.

/Silent

Installed UI does not appear.

/FullUisuppression

Lync 2010 is installed so that Lync runs but UI does not appear.

If you want to suppress the Lync UI after it is installed typically, you must first uninstall Lync and then reinstall it with the /FullUisuppression command-line argument.

See Also

Other Resources

Lync Extensibility API Concepts (Lync 2010 SDK)