Delivering Voicemail to Email as Attachments with Cisco Unity Connection 8.5

As a Network Engineer, I usually have multiple people trying to get a hold of me at the same time. It’s difficult to manage all the methods of communication these days. There is voice mail, email, instant message, phone calls, cell phone calls and someone physically being at your desk. When I get the opportunity to unify any of these methods, I’ll jump at the chance!

When I was working at PSJA, we had a Cisco UCM deployment along with Cisco Unity Messaging. I had always wanted to integrate Unity with Exchange because I’d rather check one mail box instead of two. Not only that, but sometimes people leave messages with their call back number at the end of a message and say it faster than lightning (admit it, you know this happens too much!). I’d have to waste time repeating the message over and over until I can write down the number. At my new job, I was tasked to integrate Cisco Unity Connection 8.5 with our email system.

Luckily, Cisco makes it easy to configure Unity Connection to send voice mails as attachments.

1. Login to Unity Connection Administration and navigate to System Settings > SMTP Configuration > Smart Host

2. Type the IP address of your email server (In my case, I pointed this to my Hub Transport server in Exchange 2010). You may also use the FQDN if you have setup DNS inside of Unity Connection. Be sure to add the IP address of your Unity Connection server to relay off your email server.

3. Navigate to your Users at Users > Users. Search for a user you want to relay messages for and open the user by clicking on it in the results pane.

4. Once you are editing a user at the Edit User Basics screen, click on Edit > Message Actions

5. This is where you select an Action and a relay address. Simply choose Relay the Message to forward all voice mails to the email specified under Relay Address. This will skip the Unity Connection Data Store meaning that voice mails will no longer be stored in Unity and will be forwarded to the email specified. You will not see a MWI. You can also choose Accept and Relay to receive the message on your desk phone (this will use the MWI) and also receive a copy in your email.

6. Save your changes and test.

The voice mails come attached to your email as a WAV file and Outlook 2010 has a built in preview plug in so you can listen to the messages without opening any other program. Personally, I would only use the Relay the Message option for message actions. The reasoning is that with Accept and Relay the Message option, your users will still have to clear new messages from the phone using a traditional method. Once your users are comfortable receiving voice mails through email, they won’t miss that annoying red light!