#LyncDevQ: Desktop & Application Sharing in UCWA

Sometimes people send me questions via email or Twitter about Lync Development. Rather than reply, which benefits one person, I write them up here, so that others can benefit too. You can see all the questions in the LyncDevQ category. Do you have a question?

Q: I’ve been using UCWA to create an internal website where users can chat with each other. What I want to do is add the ability for users to do desktop/application sharing in that web page. Which API should I use? I can’t find this in UCWA?

The reason you can’t find Desktop/Application Sharing in the UCWA API, is because it’s not (yet) supported! At the time of writing, UCWA only supports Instant Messaging and Presence. Because UCWA is the only client-side API that can run in the web-browser without requiring Lync installed on the machine, you can’t currently achieve what you’re trying to.

If your clients have the Lync client installed then you could use the Silverlight controls in the Client SDK to start a desktop sharing session using the client.

However, if you’re looking for something that is entirely in the browser and doesn’t require the client then keep on eye on what’s coming in the near future. At the 2014 Lync Conference, Gurdeep Singh Pall announced that “Browser extensibility with voice, video, content” was coming soon. (initially, it was coming this year, but key people in the Lync team have been exercising caution over this time frame, and it might be early 2015 before it’s released).

Hope that helps.

-tom