When creating/configuring a Response Group Service, you need to define agents, and add them to one or more groups, that you can use to link a workflow too.

When creating a group, you can set a few options and specify which agents you want to include in that group. One of the options you have available is setting its Agent participation policy as Formal, Informal or  Not active, as can be seen in the picture below.

The difference between the three types of Agent participation policy is clearly explained in the Help file:

 After creating a Formal Group, you will need to allow agents to sign in using an OC 2007 R2 custom tab. To create such a tab, you need to publish an xml file and make a change in the registry of the client to point to that location.

Step 1. Creating XML File

The following is an XML file that will point to the built-in custom tab available for the Response Group Service (published by default at https://<OCS Server>/rgs/Clients/Tab.aspx), to allow agents to sign in to any formal group too which they belong. In the XML file I specify that the accessibility is set to both, meaning, users from the inside and the ones connecting from outside will be able to use the tab.

 Step 2. Edit registry to include pointer to the published Custom Tab

Location = HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator

Add REG_SZ, Name = TabURL, Value = link to XML file created in Step 1.

This is the same location, as where you can add the ability to show the presence state "Appear Offline"  by adding a DWORD_Value EnableAppearOffline, and set it to 1. And where you can introduce up to 4 Custom Presence States. You can only include a referral to a HTTPS site, to point to the XML file!!

 After your agent signs out, and signs in again, they will see the Agent Groups they belong to by default by signing into communicator (the informal ones), and they can choose to sign into the formal ones or not.

When a user is not a member of any Agent Group, the following message will be shown:

 And when the Response Group Service is not running, the following error message will be shown to all users:

-Ilse