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Resources in UCWA

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Resources are the API in Microsoft Unified Communications Web API 2.0.

Applies to: Skype for Business 2015

UCWA 2.0 exposes various Skype for Business-specific features to the client using what are known as resources. A resource can contain:

  • information about the state of the resource, in the form of a property bag

  • an array of web links to related resources

  • embedded resources

The properties of a resource are simple string properties that can be represented in a JSON format. If a resource references another resource, this reference can appear either as a link or as an embedded resource.

A resource represents an atomic unit that is generally not broken up in any protocol data.

The components of a resource: property bag, links, and embedded resources

A depiction of the components of a resource: property bag, links, and embedded resources

The following is an abbreviated representation of the application resource.

Property bag

"rel":"application",
"culture":"en-US",
"userAgent":"MyApp"

Links

"self" : {"href" : "/ucwa/v1/applications/764"},
"batch" : {"href" : "/ucwa/v1/applications/764/batch"},
"events" : {"href" : "/ucwa/v1/applications/764/events"},
"policies" : {"href" : "/ucwa/v1/applications/764/policies"}

Embedded resources

"communication" : { ... },
"me" : { ... },
"onlineMeetings" : { ... },
"people" : { ... }

Note

A resource can change when other related resources and capabilities become dynamically available. Such changes are communicated by means of an event channel as described Event channel details in this documentation. When the client learns that a resource has been updated, it can reacquire the resource to learn about the new capabilities and related resources.

Rel attribute

Every link or resource representation in UCWA 2.0 includes a rel value, which can appear as an attribute in a link or as a property in a resource. The rel attribute is used to describe to the client how the link relates to the current resource. For example, if the server offers a contactPhoto link inside a contact resource, the client can use that link to fetch the photo resource that is associated with the contact. UCWA 2.0 uses a noun form for the rel value when the resource represents a concrete instance of a concept. Some examples are "application", "conversation", and "localParticipant". Other resources represent operations, and UCWA 2.0 represents these operations as verb forms to denote these operations. For example, the operation of starting a phone audio conversation is represented by a resource whose "rel" value is "startPhoneAudio".

Collections of resources

Some resources that are defined in the API are collections of other resources. A conversations resource is a collection of conversation resources. A convention in this API is that, for collections that support it, a POST request to a collection is used to create a new resource that belongs to the collection. For example, to create a new myOnlineMeeting resource for a team meeting, send a POST request to the myOnlineMeetings resource.