How to update your Twitter and LinkedIn Status from Lync with LyncSocial

The guys over at PLA have created a free small app to take your Lync Status and push it to Twitter and LinkedIn. The app is called LyncSocial

It’s great to see how the Lync API’s allow you to extend the experience into other applications.

It’s a free download with no registration required.

It’s an msi that runs a little installer

Which runs as a separate app in the tray

The top tick boxes set it so that all updates get pushed. When unticked you can use the hash tags section to only send optional updates. At first it threw me that the twitter and linkedin buttons were greyed out, but a quick look at the help solved that.

From the help:

LyncSocial allows you to update your status to your Twitter and/or Linked In accounts directly from your Microsoft Lync 2010 Client.

Status Updates

There are two ways to update your Twitter and/or Linked In status:

1. Automatically

When selected, LyncSocial will update all Lync personal note changes to the chosen social media account. Once a onetime authentication process is completed, no further prompting will be necessary.

2. In Line Hash Marks

Alternatively, you can also include in line hash marks in your Lync personal note to send updates to Twitter and/or Linked In.

Example:

If you define #LI as the hash mark for Linked In and you type in the following comment:

"Too bad about da Bulls this year #LI", LyncSocial will update your Linked In status to show "Too bad about da Bulls this year".

LyncSocial will strip the defined in line hash marks before sending to the chosen social media account.

Authentication

LyncSocial uses the oAuth protocol that is required by both Twitter and Linked In. More information can be found here: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/oauth_faq

The authentication process will occur the first time you send updates to your social media account. If permission is granted and authentication is successful, this information is cached and saved for future status updates. Authentication information can be cleared at any time by pressing the associated clear button in the settings page. Once cleared, it will be necessary to go through the authentication process again to post your status changes. This might be necessary if you decide to change the account in which you are sending status updates to.

So when you first change your Lync Status, you will be prompted to authenticate with Twitter and LinkedIn.

So I set my status

It will pop an ie window

You will be given an authentication number to put into twitter

For LinkedIn you just get a single window to authenticate with

Shortly after authenticating my Lync Status update was syndicated to Twitter and LinkedIn

From then on, it can sit in the tray doing it’s thing. A great little freebee from the guys at PLA.