Presence indicators without Lync

Question

Is it possible to display presence indicators in a custom web part if Lync is not available? I have seen the IMNRC function but that just shows the grey indicator flag.

We are also using Office 2010 and inside People View pane in Outlook, there is no presence show there either, so is there a setting I'm missing?

The presence setting is enabled in our SharePoint 2010 Foundation installation, I just can't find how to use it. We don't have Lync installed and there is no plans to purchase it either.

Answer 1

The SharePoint and Office presence integration works out of the box only if you have either Office Communicator 200x/Lync client or Windows Live Messenger installed on each client computer.

Answer 2

In your custom web part you can use the "NameCtrl" ActiveX Control to query for online presence status which you can in turn use to render presence indicators.

MSDN NameCtrl Control