I'm not a big fan of OCS for a whole pile of reasons, beginning with the inflexible, lacking UI and ending with restrictions on the specific deployment I use that force me to VPN to connect. Mostly issues I wouldn't have with Jabber.
With our configuration (and possibly by default) URLs were shown as plain text and not as clickable hyperlinks. You can enable this with a Group Policy – download the OCS Policies documentation and edit and import communicator.adm, or with a registry edit.
Changing the Registry
Registry edits are quick and easy, and I was only concerned about myself, so I took that route.
Save the code code below into a text file with a .reg suffix and import it, or right click the following link and and Save As to download .reg file to enable clickable URLs in OCS. Once the registry changes have been made or imported you will need to restart your OCS client.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator] "EnableURL"=dword:00000001
If you'd prefer to manually make the registry changes:
- Open regedit.ext and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator
- Create a new DWORD value called EnableURL and set the value to 1 to make the URLs clickable. Set the value to 0 to have the URLs appear as plain text.
Due Diligence
Checking in with an employee at Jabber to see if hyperlinks are enabled in MomentIM.
Good to know.
Tags: IM, OCS, Registry, Tips, Windows
November 11th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Thank you for this! Much better than trying to get IT to set a group policy.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
Thanks for this. Your instructions were much better than another site I found. My communicator went from showing links to not showing links in the middle of the day. Other people I work with were still seeing links though, so it wasn't a group policy setting. It was totally weird. But it's fixed now thanks to you.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:20 am
Hello, have some weird problem, hope you can make me clear what the reason.
i simple don't have this key HKLM/Software/Policies/Microsoft/Communicator.. ))
tried install OC on different PS and different OC versions.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
@Steysha: Do you have HKLM/Software/Policies/Microsoft? You might have to create a few keys before you can create the final DWORD value.
October 9th, 2009 at 5:26 am
Yep, thank you. Links is works. I'm thying also do Tabs which suppose to be under contact list, but unfortunately it is not works.. Any way thanks.
October 19th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
OK so I added the HKLM/…/Microsoft/Communicator Key and added a DWORD EnableURL and it works on the source machine but doesn't on the destination machine. I have ensure that they both have the registry hack and we both can see the links but we cannot see them as clickable on the destination.
Thoughts??
SD
October 20th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Hi Shawn, unfortunately this is only a setting for the local machine you make the registry changes to. If you want it applied on other machines you will need to set a group policy (easier) or apply the registry change everywhere.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Yeah that's what sucks, our organization has locked down the links and we don't have any say so now I have to learn to deal…I feel like I went back 10 years….