New Unified Messaging Functionality and Voice Mail Features
Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP2
New functionality and many new features have been added to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging (UM). This topic explains the new features for Unified Messaging and voice mail that are included in Exchange 2010.
Contents
Call Answering Rules
Additional Language Support
Improvements to Name Lookup from a Caller ID
Voice Mail Preview
Message Waiting Indicator
Missed Call and Voice Mail Notifications Using SMS
Protected Voice Mail
Incoming Fax Support
Group Addressing Using Outlook Voice Access
Built-in Unified Messaging Administrative Roles
Call Answering Rules
In Exchange 2010, the Unified Messaging server role allows UM-enabled users to create and customize call answering rules to enhance the experience of people who call them. At the time a user becomes enabled for UM, no call answering rules exist. The Exchange 2010 voice mail is the default call answering behavior. However, users can create up to nine call answering rules.
Call answering rules are similar to the Exchange Server 2007 UM auto attendants. There is usually a greeting, a menu prompt, and a list of options to choose from. The key difference between an auto attendant and a call answering rule that, when the call answering rule processes an incoming call, Unified Messaging already knows who the call is for.
Using call answering rules, a caller can:
Leave a voice message for the UM-enabled user.
Transfer to an alternate contact of the UM-enabled user.
Transfer to the alternate contact's voice mail.
Transfer to other phone numbers that the UM-enabled user has configured.
Use the Find-Me feature or locate the UM-enabled user via a supervised transfer.
Additional Language Support
In Exchange 2007, each UM language pack included a Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine and the prerecorded prompts for a specified language. UM language packs for Exchange 2007 are offered in 16 different languages. However, not all the UM language packs contain support for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). For ASR, there was only one language—US English.
For Exchange 2010, all available language packs contain the Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine and the prerecorded prompts for a specified language and ASR support. However, only some of the language packs contain support for Voice Mail Preview. The US English (en-US) language pack is included on the Exchange 2010 DVD and additional UM language packs can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.
For more information about UM language packs, see the following topics:
Improvements to Name Lookup from a Caller ID
In Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging, a voice message was created after a call was diverted to a Unified Messaging server because of a ring-no-answer or busy condition. After the call was answered, Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging tried to resolve the caller ID. It did this so that it could insert a name, rather than a number, into the sender information.
In Exchange 2007, name lookups for voice mail messages were done using information about the caller who was in the same dial plan as the user being called. Name lookups were performed by using an Exchange Unified Messaging proxy address (EUM proxy address), using the personal contacts of the user receiving the call, or using the msRTCSIP-Line attribute in Active Directory if Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Exchange 2007 was installed and Exchange 2007 was integrated with Office Communications Server 2007.
In Exchange 2010, the name lookup methods used in Exchange 2007 have been enhanced. Although Exchange 2010 includes methods that were used to resolve calling IDs in Exchange 2007, eight other Active Directory attributes have been added for resolving a caller ID to a name. You can use the following steps to look up a name from the calling party's information:
Use the caller's name if the caller is signed in to their mailbox from Outlook Voice Access or if they use a Unified Communications client such as Office Communicator 2007 or Office Communicator Phone Edition to place the call. The caller's identity is known because they've already been authenticated by Outlook Voice Access, Office Communicator 2007 or Office Communicator Phone Edition.
Use the EUM proxy addresses in Active Directory. If the proxy address contains an at sign (@), it's considered to be a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). If the proxy address begins with a plus sign (+), it's considered to be an E.164 number. If neither of these symbols is present, the address is considered to be an extension within the same dial plan as the called party or an equivalent dial plan.
If the caller ID is a valid SIP URI, use Active Directory to resolve the SIP URI using the EUM proxy addresses.
If the caller ID is a valid E.164 number, use Active Directory to resolve the number using the calling party's name. For this to work correctly, you must manually configure the
UMCallingLineIdsparameter on the UM-enabled mailbox for each user. This is useful when you don't want to publish a telephone number, such as a personal cell phone number, in Active Directory, but still want to resolve the calling party's name by using this phone number.Use Active Directory heuristic matching, if it is enabled, to resolve the number using the calling party's name. Active Directory heuristic matching must be enabled on the dial plan, and the user's account in Active Directory must contain information in at least one of the following Active Directory attributes:
TelephoneNumber
HomePhone
Mobile
FacsimileTelephoneNumber
OtherTelephone
OtherHomePhone
OtherMobile
OtherFacsimileTelephoneNumber
Use the personal Contacts of the called party to resolve the number using the calling party's name.
If the calling party's name is not resolved using one the methods described previously, the phone number is used in the voice mail message.
Voice Mail Preview
In Exchange 2010, the Unified Messaging server role uses ASR on newly created voice mail messages. When users receive voice messages, the messages contain both a recording and text that's been created from the voice recording. Users see the voice message text displayed in an e-mail message from within Outlook Web App, Outlook 2007, or Outlook 2010.
Message Waiting Indicator
Message Waiting Indicator is a feature found in most legacy voice mail systems and can refer to any mechanism that indicates the existence of a new message. In Exchange 2007, this functionality was provided by a third-party application, which indicated receipt of a new voice message by lighting the lamp on the desk phone. This feature has been added to Exchange 2010, and third-party software isn't needed. Enabling or disabling Message Waiting Indicator is done on the user's mailbox or on a UM mailbox policy.
Missed Call and Voice Mail Notifications Using SMS
When users are members of a hosted or consumer dial plan, and they configure their voice mail settings with their mobile phone number and configure call forwarding, they can receive notifications about missed calls and new voice messages on their cell phones in a text message via the Short Messaging Service (SMS). However, to receive these types of notifications, the users must first configure text messaging and also enable Notifications on their account.
Protected Voice Mail
Protected Voice Mail is Unified Messaging functionality that enables users to send private mail. This mail is protected by Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS), and users are restricted from forwarding, copying, or extracting the voice file from e-mail. Protected Voice Mail increases the confidentiality of Unified Messaging, and lets users rely on Unified Messaging if they want to limit the audience for voice messages. This functionality is similar to the way private e-mail messages were handled in Exchange 2007. In Exchange 2010, it applies to voice mail messages as well.
Incoming Fax Support
Exchange 2007 provided built-in support for fax message creation through the Unified Messaging server role. A user with a UM-enabled mailbox could receive fax messages from calls placed to his or her phone number. There's no support in Exchange 2007 UM for inbound fax routing, or for outgoing fax.
In Exchange 2010, direct support for fax has been removed from the Unified Messaging server role. Customers who require a fax solution that works with Exchange 2010 will need to deploy a fax partner solution. Fax partner solutions are available from several fax partners. The fax partner solutions are designed to be tightly integrated with Exchange 2010 and allow UM-enabled users to receive incoming fax messages.
Group Addressing Using Outlook Voice Access
In Exchange 2007, users could use either the telephone user interface (TUI) or voice user interface (VUI) in Outlook Voice Access to send e-mail and voice messages when they logged on to their mailbox. However, users could only send a single e-mail message to a single user in their personal Contacts, to multiple recipients from the directory by adding each recipient individually, or by adding the name of a distribution list from the global address list. In Exchange 2010, when a user signs in to their mailbox using Outlook Voice Access, they can also send e-mail and voice messages to users in a group stored in their personal Contacts.
Built-in Unified Messaging Administrative Roles
A set of roles for managing Unified Messaging and voice mail features have been defined within Exchange 2010. Administrative roles that included UM were available in Exchange 2000. The following UM-specific administrative roles have been added for Exchange 2010:
UM Mailboxes
UM Prompts
Unified Messaging
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