Introduction to Chat Server Extensibility SDK

The Chat Server Extensibility SDK provides the chat service developer and administrator a means of monitoring and responding to events that occur within the Microsoft® Exchange Chat Service. Until now, extending the chat service usually meant writing bots or adding specialized channel services. However, bots could only view and control aspects of the service that a normal user could, and channel services were functionally limited and difficult to implement.

Chat server extensions, on the other hand, are a integral part of the chat service and offer a new level of control by enabling administrators to write their own chat server modifications. In fact, the Channel Transcription and Profanity Filter extensions included with Microsoft Exchange Chat Service were written using this extensibility model. Chat server extensions replace the channel services of earlier releases.

Important: Microsoft Internet Chat (MIC) clients are not currently supported by servers running chat server extensions.

Extensions can be programmed in any language that supports the creation of COM objects, such as Microsoft Visual Basic or Visual C++. Using the Chat Server Extensibility API, extensions can respond to server, user, and channel events, both locally and on the chat server network. In addition to the extensibility API, the Chat Server Object Model facilitates a broad range of services by providing access to the server's channels and users. Lastly, the Chat Service Administration object model enables configuration of the chat service itself.

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