unified Messaging and voice mail only

[tarun.pahuja]

Folks,

I have a question. I have unified messaging installed in my organization. Few people will be relocating and will not have access to exchange for some reason, so i want to modify their accounts to voice-mail only. Is it possible?

Can't i recreate suscribers account as internet users and not exchange users, would that do it?

Do i need to do something else, to creat a voice-mail account in a unified messaging environment.

Thanks

[lindborg]

You can't mix VM and UM licenses on the same server - if you want users to have a mailbox on Unity (VM or UM) they need to be a full subscriber - internet subscribers have no mailstore (they forward their mail to an external email address).

If you want their mailbox to not appear in the address book you can hide them in the directory. In 4.0(3) this can be done via the Unity SA, in earlier versions you need to do this in AD directly.

[jaywydra]

So this would be the only way to keep a user from receiving voicemails in e-mail? If I go ahead and do this for a user then it means regular e-mail users won't be able to see this e-mail account in exchange?

Thanks,

Jason

[milucero]

Hi,

For the people that are moving, there is no need to change anything in Unity, the people will still be able access their voice mail over the phone. This is providing that the Exchange mailbox they are currently using is not deleted.

The only difference in an account that is “Unified messaging” and “Voicemail only” is the “unified” account can access the voicemail via an email client and has the VMO plugin to play the audio embedded in the client.

A “Voicemail Only” account would have a mailbox in Exchange, just like the “Unified” account, but the user would not use a client to open the Inbox, only via the phone TUI (Telephony User Interface).

If you really want to change their accounts to a mailbox that is different from the one they used when they were Unified, you will have to delete them from Unity, mark their mailboxes for deletion in Exchange, then Purge the mailbox.

Go to www.ciscounitytools.com and get the Remove Subscriber Properties tool, run it on their accounts in AD (this removes the Unity specific properties on those accounts so they can be imported back in), create a new mailbox in Exchange, and then import them back into Unity.

Mike

[tarun.pahuja]

Thanks for the reply, what do you mean by different mailbox? you mean internet user as appose to exchange user? can't i simply delete the account from unity and exchange and create it again. please enlighten me a little more.

Thanks

[milucero]

No, an Internet user does not have a mailstore, so I do not think you want that.

When you “delete” an account from Exchange, it only marks the mailbox for deletion, it keeps it a default of 30 days, so you will have to manually purge it (otherwise when you create the account again, it will use the same mailbox). Deleting an account from Unity does not touch the AD account or Exchange account.

Keep in mind this is no different from what you have now, it would just be a new empty mailbox that the users would have.

[alarics]

Hi,

I have an instance where the VM only account receives the message in their mail client.Is there a way to disable the sending of the message to the email client.

[lindborg]

You probably want to start this on a new thread rather than jumping onto the end of this one...

but regardless, Unity isn't "sending the message to the email client" - we are using their mail account as the default message repository for voice mails (this is Unified messaging - all messages are stored in one place). If you want them to have a voice mail box but not have their voice mail show up in their email store you have to create a new mailbox and assign their Unity subscriber to that mailbox. Typically you'd then hide that mailbox in the address book so it doesn't show up for other email users to send email to.