Cisco Unity Connection: Relay Address vs. Single Inbox Functionality

[tschafferx]

Dear Cisco community,

we are using the Single Inbox (SIB) feature without ViewMail in order to receive voicemails as .wav emails.

Why would I configure a relay address under the User page --> Message Actions menu, if I have already configured SIB to synchronize with my exchange mailbox email address? Wouldn't that render the same functionality and would it be sufficient to just configure a relay email address to achieve the same goal.

Thank you in advance.

[Brandon Buffin · Accepted solution]

The difference is SIB allows for the synchronization of new messages, read activity, deletions, etc. Relay would only forward the message to an email address (no synchronization beyond forwarding the original message). Relay would be useful for forwarding to an external address as opposed to an internal address on a corporate Exchange/O365 server. Could also be used to forward to a distribution list for example.

Brandon

[tschafferx]

Hi Brandon,

okay, that seems to explain it. I think with the Relay Message feature I also have to configure a Smart Host which means that the email format will be the one from the Exchange Smart Hub Server as opposed to SIB where I would receive an E-Mail address in the format of the SMTP-Domain configured on Unity.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Another interesting topic would be, if you could explain, how Unity and Exchange synchronize with each other. Haven't found anything that explains it thouroughly. For example. I read the message in Outlook and Unity get aware of it and disables the MWI on the phone.

Thank you for you input!

Best regards

Thomas

[Brandon Buffin]

CUC uses EWS (Exchange Web Services) to communicate with Exchange in any newer implementation. For integration with Exchange 2003, WebDAV was used for communication. Take a look at the following link. While not detailed, it does give some idea of the protocols used.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/37917.exchange-2016-integration-with-cisco-unity-connection-for-voicemail.aspx

Brandon