Designing Characters for Microsoft Office

ActiveX® technology for interactive software agents

Microsoft Corporation

October 1998

Download this document in Microsoft Word (.DOC) format (zipped, 11K).

Contents
Introduction
Animation Design
The Office Animation Set
Installing Your Character

Introduction

This document provides information that can help you design and develop a Microsoft Agent character for use within Microsoft® Office 2000 (Microsoft Agent characters do not work with Microsoft Office 97). This document assumes that you have a working knowledge of the Microsoft Agent Character Editor and know how to create Microsoft Agent Characters. More information on the Agent Character Editor and designing and developing characters is provided in Using the Microsoft Agent Character Editor. More information about creating characters for Microsoft Agent is provided in Designing Characters for Microsoft Agent.

Animation Design

Image Design

Use the Microsoft Office Palette when designing your characters to minimize any potential palette realization issues. You should also ensure your transparency color is far from any of the colors that you use in your document. Download the palette file to adapt your character's palette (.bmp,13K).

Sounds

Microsoft Agent enables you to play sounds in your animations. We recommend you do not include sounds for your Idle animations. In addition, animations that include sounds should have a "silent" sound accompanying their initial frame. This is so there won't be a delay in the middle of the animation, if Agent has to load the system multimedia DLL.

Frame Size

Typical Office Assistants are 123 x 93 pixels. While you can create characters of other sizes, they will be scaled to 123 x 93 in the Assistant Gallery.

Frame Transition

All animations except for Goodbye, Greeting, Show and Hide should begin and end with the RestPose animation. Microsoft Office does not play explicit Return animations, so you should not define them. All animations should also have Exit Branching. Exit branching enables us to 'hurry up and finish' the current animation before we call the next animation. If you don't supply Exit Branching, the transition between animations may be jerky.

Character Properties

Microsoft Agent enables you to set the character's Name, Description and ExtraData properties. Microsoft Office uses the ExtraData field to hold to one or more Introduction Phrases and Reminder Phrases. Microsoft Office picks from the other Introduction Phrases to put in the speech balloon in the Assistant Gallery. We use the Reminder Phrases when you receive a reminder from Outlook.

The ExtraData field is formatted as follows:

IntroPhrase1~~IntroPhrase2~~IntroPhrase3^^ReminderPhrase1~~ReminderPhrase2~~ReminderPhrase3

Intro Phrases are separated by a pair of tilde characters (~), followed by Reminder Phrases. These Reminder Phrases are also separated by a pair of tilde characters. The two sets of phrases are separated by two caret characters (^^). There is no limit to the number of each kind of phrase, except that there must be at least one of each.

The Office Animation Set

The following table lists the animations defined for the Microsoft Office 2000 characters. If you intend to use your character in Microsoft Office, you should support all of the animations in this table. In addition, you can add any other animations you live, but keep in mind that Microsoft Office won't call them. Animations with asterisks (*) should be 100% looping. Other animations should be brief.

Animation	Agent State	Example of When Used	Specific animation examples
Alert	None	When the character wants to alert the user	Character looks towards user.
CheckingSomething*	None	Spellcheck, grammar check	Character looks something up in a reference book
Congratulate	None	Complete a wizard	Big grin, look of relief, tired but happy
EmptyTrash	None	Trash is emptied in Outlook	Character lights trash can on fire
Explain	None	When the character wants to explain something to the user	Looks briefly but attentively at user, then look away
GestureDown	GesturingDown	Character points out something on the screen	Character looks at user and then points and looks at the screen
GestureLeft	GesturingLeft	Character points out something on the screen, such as a help topic or a piece of UI	Character looks at user and then points and looks at the screen
GestureRight	GesturingRight	"Presenting" a help topic or dialog	Character looks at user and then points and looks at the screen
GestureUp	GesturingUp	Character points out something on the screen	Character looks at user and then points and looks at the screen
GetArtsy*	None	AutoFormat	Character puts on beret, holds palette, and paints
GetAttention	None	High-priority tip	Gestures strongly to get the user's attention; for example, jumps up and down waving arms
GetTechy	None	Runs while in programming environment	Character pulls out calculator or soldering iron
GetWizardy*	None	Chart Wizard running while Character visible (action re-triggered with each new wizard panel)	Character puts on wizard hat and waves wand
Goodbye	None	Another Character is chosen	This is an elaborate disappear that begins in RestPose and ends with blank frame
Greeting	None	Character is chosen	This is an elaborate appear that begins with a blank frame, and ends in RestPose
Hearing_1*	None	Lengthy file open	Ear to the ground, listening to the computer
Hide	Hiding	Character leaves temporarily	Leaves quickly in a puff of smoke
Idle1_1	No user input	Actively listening, then curls up and goes to sleep. (opportunity to show off character personality)	Multiple loops, of varying duration
Idle2	No user input	Longer idle periods	Character yawns and looks sleepy
Idle3	No user input	Deep idle (when the character has been idle for a long time)	Character goes to sleep
IdleHit	None	This is a non-mapped representative sample of Idle Level 1 animations	All of the idle animations
LookDown	None	Looks down briefly	Notices a row is inserted and glances at it
LookDownLeft	None	Looks down and left briefly	Notices a row is inserted and glances at it
LookDownRight	None	Looks down and right briefly	Notices a column is inserted and glances at it
LookLeft	None	Looks left briefly	Notices a table is inserted and glances at it
LookRight	None	Looks right briefly	Notices a word is moved and glances at it
LookUp	None	Looks up briefly, as if at something going on above character on the screen	Notices toolbar button gets clicked and glances at it (Character isn't surprised as much as interested)
LookUpLeft	None	Looks left and up briefly	Notices toolbar button gets clicked and glances at it (Character isn't surprised as much as interested)
LookUpRight	None	Looks right and up briefly	Notices toolbar button gets clicked and glances at it (Character isn't surprised as much as interested)
Print	None	Printing a page of a print job	Grabs one piece of paper and sends it down to the printer
Processing*	None	General action for which we don't have specific character action	Character gets look of concentration and pulls out a hammer to hammer. Animation should have a quick entry into a loop, then a quick exit
RestPose	None	Used when the character isn't playing an animation	An image of the assistant
Save*	None	Used during a File Save operation	Character puts something into a vault
Searching*	None	Used for Find, spell check, and grammar check	Head turns and looks back at document. Animation should have a quick entry into a loop, then a quick exit
SendMail	None	Sending mail	Pulls out a letter and puts it into a mailbox
Show	Showing	Character returns from brief leave	Springs quickly on stage, quickly
Thinking*	None	Doing a complex calculation, such as Solver	Character looks upward and scratches head. Animation should have a quick entry into a loop, then a quick exit
Wave	None	Accompanying alerts	Wave. Similar to Alert, but not as long or as frantic
Writing*	None	Customer changes something in Tools Options; customer typing IntelliSearch request	Pulls out pad and starts scribbling. Animation should have a quick entry into a loop, then a quick exit

Installing Your Character

For your character to show in the Assistant Gallery, install it in the Microsoft\Office\Actors folder inside of the user's Application Data folder. The Application Data folder can be found in the Windows directory or in the User Profiles directory inside of the Windows directory. For example, on Windows 2000, you might install your character in "C:\WinNT\Profiles\YourName\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Actors".