Unified Messaging 1

[snootalope]

Hello

Can someone explain to me what exactly unified messaging is?

We have Unity 4.0 in house here and I was looking into sending voice messages left for users into their email.. I've heard it's possible, but I've never done it.

Thanks for any help..
Snoots

 

[scaine]

That's exactly what Unified Messaging is. As far as I know, Unity comes in two flavours :
* Unity Voicemail
* Unity Unifed Messaging

The only difference (although I'm no expert on Unity) is that Unified Messaging is "unified" with your e-mail system. This just means that when you get a voicemail, although you can still hit the "messages" button on your phone to listen to it, you now also have the option of double clicking on the e-mail that just arrived and hitting the little "play" button. Then your phone rings and plays the message back for you.

We use it here - it's a good system. Quick and easy. I should warn that the installation is far from simple though. I'd recommend you find a good integrator if you decide to go down this road. One who knows Exchange (if that's what you use) as much as Cisco.

 

[ladato]

Scaine, you are close but not quite on.

"Unified messaging" (in the gospel according to Cisco) means that your voicemail, email and faxes go to a single place and that, given the right client, you can view them all in one place too.

In Unity's case, you need to use Exchange or Domino as the back end "messaging server", which stores email (duh) and also voice messages and faxes. The voice messages and faxes show up in your email client (Outlook/Notes) as a different file, and play as wav files.

The other thing about Unity is that it ties into existing voicemail systems (usually during migration). So you can have some users on Unity and some users on Octel or whatever.

Finally, Unity does NOT come in two flavors. You buy Unity and that's it. What you can do is set up subscribers (users) as either VM-only or Unified Messaging.

Finally Finally, you can also set up subscribers who don't have exchange/domino accounts. in that case the admin puts in their internet address and Unity emails them a wav file, but then it doesn't get stored anywhere. if they delete the email, they are sunk.

Hope that is more than you ever wanted to know.

Leon

Leon Adato (adatole@yahoo.com)
Measure what is measurable,
And make measurable what is not so.
- Galileo