TrainSignal’s own J. Peter Bruzzese has taken the stage at TechEd, room 356. Today he’s covering a topic that still mystifies many Exchange pros: Unified Messaging (UM). What is it? What are the features that come with it? For those of you who couldn’t make it to New Orleans for the conference, I’ll share the highlights of his session, the Deep Dark Secrets of Unified Messaging.
Fear often holds people back from embracing UM, but J. Peter wants you to know it’s not as scary as you think. He says you shouldn’t be paying for third-party solutions, especially as it becomes more and more important as an IT admin to save your company money, even if it means taking on more work. “It’s how you shine, how you stand out, ” says J. Peter.
He kicked off the session with the Top 10 Unified Messaging features:
1. Call answering: Exchange can answer specific calls or all calls with auto attendants. Can make a business look larger than it really is with multiple auto attendants for various departments or different languages.
2. Outlook Voice Access: Voice equivalent of Outlook Web App or Outlook. You can call into the system for your voice mails or have emails read to you.
3. Voice Mail Preview: You get a “best guess” transcription of voice mails via email.
4. Incoming Fax Support: With previous versions of UM solutions, there was a built-in fax solution, whereas now you have to go with a third-party, but the fax comes into our inbox.
5. End users can specify their own call-answering rules.
6. play on phone: So voice mails don’t have to be heard over speakers.
7. Language packs: Grammar files, ASR vocab for commands and menu responses, and transcription ability.
8. Message Waiting Indicator is now available.
9. Miss call/voice mail notification via texts.
10. Protected voice mail: mimics the * private voice mail marking.
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He also talked through virtualizing UM for Exchange 2010, which requires…
- That you install the UM role on a 64-bit edition of Win Serer 2008 R2.
- That the UM role must be the only role installed on the virtual machine. It may not be combined with any other role on the same VM.
- The VM must have at least four CPU cores and at least 16GB of RAM.
With Exchange 2013, however, virtualization is supported (plain and simple).
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