Mail, iChat AV, Jabber and "Show online buddy status."

[Kelmon]

Hi Guys,

I posted the following "problem" on Apple's own boards but have received bugger-all response on it so I'm hoping that someone here might have an idea what the problem is:

I'm trying to use Mail and iChat together since discovering the "Chat" button that appears on the toolbar when you Reply to an email. The Mail online Help states that in order to use this function I need to ensure that enable the "Show online buddy status." Preferences option (Preferences > Viewing), which I have done. Enabling this option means that I can now see the column in my Inbox with the little speech bubble that, according to Help, should indicate whether the author of the e-mail is online or not. The problem is that this field is curiously blank for everyone...

iChat AV is currently logged onto my corporate Jabber server and I can see that a number of the people from which I have recently received emails are online. The email address associated with my Jabber contacts is the same as the email address that is shown in Mail. Despite this the Buddy Availability column in Mail continues to be empty and the Chat button remains disabled when I reply to a contact who is currently online.

Does the iChat AV/Mail integration only work with AIM?

Mail = 2.0.3
iChat AV = 3.0.1

 

[ravenvii]

Did you put their screennames and their email addresses in the same address book address card? I think that's how it works, it looks at the address book for the email address, finds the associated screenname, then checks if the screenname is online or not.

If you have, then I have no idea. Sorry.

 

[Kelmon]

Thanks for the response. Yes, each of my contacts in iChat AV have been linked to Address Book contacts taken from an LDAP server. The entries for a contact in iChat AV has an entry in the Address Book where the IM section has an Other entry set to their Jabber account name and Jabber protocol.

For example, the IM entry for myself looks like the following:

Other - 317245@jabber.server.com (Jabber)

Each entry in the Address Book has an email address and this is the same one that appears if I ask iChat to "Show Info" for a Buddy.

Oddly, while I was about report that I don't think Jabber is supported for this, I have just observed an email arrive where the Buddy Availability column was correctly populated and worked. However, after returning from lunch I now note that this field is again empty for the new email but if I double-click it an iChat window is opened; the online status of the email's author is also displayed when I open the email into its own window.

Anyway, it seems to work, sort of. I currently now wish to make sure that it works consistently...