AvailaBOT - Get notified when a contact is available in Webex Teams

• AvailaBOT - Get notified when a contact is available in Webex Teams
  • Goal
  • Features
  • Inspiration and credits
  • New functionalities
    • Recently added
    • Previously added
  • How to set it up
  • How to use it
  • Launching the script
  • Features to implement

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Goal

The goal of this script is simply to add the "Alert when available" function from Cisco Jabber to Webex, by displaying a notification when a user is available in Webex:

Simply enter your coworker or friend's e-mail and let the script do all the work, you won't need to check Webex every 5 minutes to see if your contact is finally available, the script will do it for you and check every 30 seconds if your contact is available.

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Features

• Runs in PowerShell (the script should be able to run on most computers in environments without administrator rights)
• Data refreshes every 30 seconds
• The script will display the user's avatar (if available) in the notification
• Multiple instances of this script can run at the same time (to get alerts for multiple contacts)
• Runs in the background
• Cleans automatically the temporary files used
• The script will tell you if you enter a wrong e-mail or a non-existing user e-mail
• Simple to use: just generate your Cisco token and use the script as many times as you want

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Inspiration and credits

This PowerShell script will notify you when a contact is available in Webex Teams, for a chat or call. This script was made, because Cisco, for some reason, doesn't want to include this awesome function, even if it's present in Cisco Jabber. This project was inspired by this AppleScript by Yossi Meloch.

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New functionalities

Recently added

• Added "Last activity" info in PowerShell terminal. If the user is offline for example, you can know when it was last seen online or the last time Webex was used by the user

• Improved notification layout, with Webex logo and user avatar (if the user has set one)

• Storing the user's avatar with a local temp file
• Deleting the local avatar after the script ends

Previously added

• Better toast notification look

• When clicked, the notification will open Webex's chat with your selected contact
• To improve character encoding issues, the API calls are saved in a temp file and deleted once the contact is available
• Older undeleted temp files (like if you stop the script before the contact is available) are automatically deleted when you start the script again
• Support for non-existing e-mail adresses: the script will check if the user exists. If not, you'll be prompted to re-enter the e-mail
• Support for API calls errors

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How to set it up

In order to get the script to work, you'll need to create a token to call Cisco's API. For that, simply go to this page and click Create a Bot. After filling some details, you'll get a Bearer token.

Simply paste this token on line 2 in WebexAvailability.ps1:

<# Your personnal token from https://developer.webex.com/docs/bots #>
$token = "REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_PERSONNAL_TOKEN"

and you're good to go !

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How to use it

Simply double click on Run availaBOT.bat and follow the instructions:

Simply enter the e-mail adress of the colleague or user you want to be notified and press enter. The script will check the user's status every ten second. When the user is available, you'll get a Windows notification.

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Launching the script

You can start the script by either:

• Right-clicking on WebexAvailability.ps1 and selecting Execute with PowerShell
• Double clicking on Run availaBOT.bat (preferred)

For the second option, you can even create a shortcut to this file and place it anywhere you want. A shortcut with Webex logo is already made in the repo, see the Run availaBOT.lnk file. For example, I placed mine in the Start Menu, that way, I can quickly start the script anywhere:

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Features to implement

• Integrate the URI webexteams://im?email=firstname.lastname@example.com to open Webex
• Add notification with windows's popup boxes