Using SIPE and OCS with bitlbee-libpurple

Bitlbee + libpurple can talk to SIPE and Microsoft's OCS. First, you need a Bitlbee with libpurple support. Next you need the pidgin-sipe plugin. This is packaged in Debian and Ubuntu. Then it's easy. For OCS, you add your account like this:

account add sipe EMAIL-ADDRESS,DOMAIN\USERNAME PASSWORD

Pidgin calls the EMAIL-ADDRESS field "Username" and the DOMAIN\USERNAME field "Login." For non-OCS SIPE you might not need the ,DOMAIN\USERNAME part. In case it helps you figure out your usernames, here's a screenshot of the Pidgin account setup page.

It may also be necessary to escape the slash between DOMAIN and USERNAME. You can confirm if this is necessary by viewing the account settings after adding the account.

account n set

Check that username = email,domain\username appears formatted correctly. If the slash is missing, then correct it by escaping the slash.

account n set username you@email.com,domain\\login

If you get the following error: sipe - Login error: You have been rejected by the server: You are currently not using the recommended version of the client You will need to set a proper useragent so that you're able to connect, as outlined Here.

This should do it. account n set useragent UCCAPI/3.5.6907.0

If you get SSL errors with Ubuntu 12.04: Put "export NSS_SSL_CBC_RANDOM_IV=0" into /etc/init.d/bitlbee