Code Library

The Lync 2010 SDK includes the Lync controls, a set of Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) controls that you can use to integrate functionality found in the Lync client directly into your applications.

The SDK also includes the Lync application programming interface (API), a brand - new, managed API for building custom communications solutions. The Lync API is intended to replace the IMessenger and UCC APIs available with Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The IMessenger API was easy to get started with, but was fairly limited in functionality; it was also a little cumbersome to troubleshoot because it used COM interoperability to interact with the running instance of Communicator on the user ’ s machine.

The UCC API was very difficult to get started with in comparison, but it provided the most power and functionality if you wanted to build a Communicator replacement. Unlike the UCC API, the Lync API requires the Lync client to be running — it reuses the connection that the client has established with the Lync infrastructure. You can configure the Lync client to run in UI Suppression mode — where its user interface is invisible to the user — enabling you to build custom communications clients previously only possible when using the UCC API.

Source of Information : Wiley - Professional Unified Communications Development with Microsoft Lync Server