How I succeeded to configure Pidgin to work with our Office Communications Server

Since it was a real hassle to figure out these settings I decided to note them here for future references. Since I didn’t find this variant of the Pidgin+SIPE+LCS configuration anywhere else, it may be useful for others too.

While talking to others using Pidgin + LCS I noticed the configuration may differ depending on your setup, i.e. internal only or external LCS / SIP server.
At work we use an internal only LCS server which is only listening on its default TCP port (5060).
Below you can see that I need to enter domain + username in the auth* fields. I know others that don’t use these fields in their setup, but they do have an externally accessible (over TLS/SSL, port 443) LCS / SIP server.
So be prepared, your result may vary .

Download Pidgin (v2.5.5 in my case)
Download SIPE (v1.3.3, libsipe.dll, precompiled dist for Windows)
Put libsipe.dll in the plugins directory of Pidgin
Go to Accounts -> Manage Accounts
Choose Add..
Enter the following settings.

Tab: Basic
Protocol = Microsoft LCS/OCS
Username = <your SIP address in Active Directory is your primary e-mail address>
Password = <your Active Directory password>

Tab: Advanced
Use Proxy = Checked
Proxy Server = <the FQDN of your LCS server, i.e. mylcs.corp.local>
Use non-standard port = Checked
Port = 5060
Connection Type = TCP
Auth User = <your Active Directory username>
Auth Domain = <your Active Directory domain name in dotted form, i.e. corp.local>
Click Save and you should see your LCS contacts appearing in the Buddy List of Pidgin

All Done!

Written by anderssonjohan

March 16, 2009 at 11:02

Posted in software, troubleshooting

5 Responses

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Finally!!! Now I can replace my corporate Windows Messenger with lovely Pidgin. I only should say that in my case no proxy must be chosen since we do not use it for authorization.Tack!!

Alex

May 25, 2009 at 14:29

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Thanks a million for putting this together, works perfectly with OCS 2007 even. One additional step I had to do was "fake" the user agent to this: "UCCP/2.0.6362.0 OC/2.0.6362.0 (Microsoft Office Communicator)" to be able to log in to the server, otherwise flawless.

Anonymous

August 17, 2009 at 15:37

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WOW!!!!!! Man I’ve been trying to find something for over a year that would allow me to stop using the lame interface that I was locked into with communicator. This is so cool. Thank you!!!

anonymous 2

October 16, 2010 at 00:17

Reply
- Oh, I should have noted for the benefit of others reading this: I am running on Windows 7, Office Communicator 2007 R2.
  
  And, I didn’t even have to configure any ports for it, I just downloaded the plugin and I was able to add my account. It works great!!!
  
  anonymous 2
  
  October 16, 2010 at 00:20
  
  Reply
Hi all, has anyone got this working with the latest release 2.10.1?
I’ve copied the .dll into the plugins folder as advised but no LCS/OCS protocol shows up when configuring an account?

thanks,

Martin

Martin

January 13, 2012 at 17:47

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Mr Andersson