Simon Phillip's Unified Messaging Blog

What is Unified Messaging Exactly and whats all the fuss about… well. I’ll try and sum it up in real world terms as best as i can – although please take note this is just a quick overview:

In the world of Exchange Server UM (Unified Messaging) is the ability to provide users with email, voice mail and telephoney and fax in one single location.. their Exchange mailbox through the outlook desktop client. UM first appeared in Exchange 2007 and does pretty much what it says on the tin but as ever.. time has moved on and we now have Exchange 2010 which is a much more polished product and offers far more than just better UM features (I’m sure Tony and Nathan will cover that in their blogs and articles though).

Some of the neat features available in Exchange 2010 with UM:

Voicemail previews:  Exchange 2010 now makes it much easier to navigate through to your voice messages. You can read the contents of a voicemail just as if your reading an email through the preview pane. Voicemails can be linked to contact and phone numbers just like regular emails making it really easy from a user perspective. Navigating the audio from a vboicemail is also really easy with users now able to simply click on a word in the preview text to jump to that point of the voicemail and continue listening.

Voicemail Protection:  The new Exchange 2010 provides more granular control over who can access voicemails and what they can do with those voicemails. By using AD rights management services Exchange is able to apply permissions such as ‘Do not forward’ to certain messages if they are marked as private by the sender.. this is pretty good as if you setup your environment correctly you as a sender can determine an amount of privacy and security you want on your message. This means no unauthorised playback of sensitive voicemails, nice idea.
The Message Waiting indicator:  MWI is a neat feature (although how much it’ll be used I’m not sure) that can notify users of any new or previously unread voicemails if they have a supported and integrated handset on their desk (which if they are a fully implemented UM site they should have). User can now even configure SMS message notifications on their account to receive the beginning of a voicemail (think of it as a voicemail preview feature by SMS). Good idea – But i wonder how much it will be used in your business – think about this before you set it up.

Outlook Voice Access:  This sounds pretty cool, mostly because it is! With OVA your users can control their own inboxes by calling in with a phone via voice or keypad. This is great for access while working away or when your out on the road. Users can manage their inbox and calender on the phone. Through the text to voice features items such as calender entries can be amended and actions taken by the system such as, cancelling meetings or perhaps informing participants you need to cancel.  – OVa can even read your emails out. Great if your driving and have hands free in the car!

Auto Attendant:  Auto Attendeant is a handy feature as if somebody calls a user in your business and doesnt know the extension they need to reach that individual they can opt to use the auto attendant feature from the initial call greeting to navigate to that users mailbox or extension. Auto attendnant has many other features that can be useful too, like business greetings, schedules, private mailbox messages etc. Although this is really a subset of the Call answering rules. These are rules based on certain conditions like Caller ID’s, Time of the day or perhaps a users free/busy status from Exchange.

As i mentioned at the start, this is a quick look to get you up to speed if you didn’t already know about these features. I’ll be posting more about these individually in a setup and real world context soon.

Hi all, my name is Simon Phillips and I work alongside Tony Brown (Check out his blog) and will be keeping tabs on all the UM related Exchange news and views on the new look MMMUG website.

 Like Tony I have been using Exchange since the days of Microsoft Mail (How long ago was that!). I have a stack of MCP’s, MCSE, MCITP and all the usual badges along with the real world experience needed to make it fly. Over the years I have been project lead for a number of large businesses you will have heard of on various AD and Exchange related projects and have some pretty good exposure that I hope to able to pass on to you guys here at MMMUG.

 I’ll be blogging about UM related items and technologies and trying my best to work through your issues and present helpful advice and solutions wherever I can. Check back soon for more blogs and I look forward to meeting you at the meetings.