ShoreTel Instant Messaging on SA-100

ShoreTel Daily Factoid – ShoreTel Instant Messaging (IM) Service

ShoreTel 12 allows organizations to deploy ShoreTel Instant Messaging (IM) Service through the installation of the Service Appliance 100.

The IM service provides secure, corporate Instant Messaging to ShoreTel users using ShoreTel Communicator as well as through the use of third party IM Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) clients.

The first third party IM client supported by ShoreTel is Apple’s iChat client.

Terms

• iChat – An instant messaging software application by Apple Inc. for the Mac OS X operating system.
• XMPP – Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, a set of open XML technologies for presence and real-time communication developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999, formalized by the IETF in 2002-2004.

Feature Description

The iChat client connects to the ShoreTel IM service and offers the following features:
*Seamless authentication into the ShoreTel system Secure communication
*Contact list management*
*Offline messaging*
*Multi-party conversation*
*IM presence*
*Presence privacy*

Apples  iChat Client

• iChat has three presence states
  *Offline
  *Available (Green)
  *Away (Red)

Each presence state may be presented in multiple custom displays.

iChat Presence Menu

Since ShoreTel Communicator has more presence statuses than XMPP standard supports, Communicator uses status notes to simulate other states if a user logs in with an iChat client.

ShoreTel Communicator converts the iChat status notes to the Communicator status.

For instance, if a user typed in English, “In a Meeting” in the iChat client, Communicator will show “Away: In a Meeting”, status instead of just showing ‘Away’