PSU voicemail upgrade – Unity Connection 7

This Friday, the University Park VoIP voicemail system, currently Cisco Unity 4.0.5, will be upgraded–migrated, actually–to Unity Connection 7. A number of us received training on this last fall, and we are eager to move ahead to the new system.

In terms of features, this is a one-for-one migration–no features lost, and no features added at the time of the upgrade. We have been running Unity in voice-mail-only (VMO) mode, where an Exchange mail system acts as the voice mail storage facility and nothing more–no e-mail integration, web access, or other Exchange features. Connection is designed for the VMO-type deployment, so while the feature set remains the same, we are gaining a lot with this upgrade, administratively:

  • no more Exchange
  • no more domain management to support an isolated Exchange
  • no more Microsoft patching for the above
  • two messaging servers rather than two (Unity) + two (DC) + two (Exchange) = six
  • Cisco Linux platform, including the better Disaster Recovery System (DRS) and upgrade/patch deployment

And lastly, this gets PSU un-stuck from 2004 and able to move ahead more easily as new versions or features come along.

Coworkers Chris (who needs to update his blog) and Sean are the ones making this happen. Huge thanks, guys.

Going beyond the straight migration of this weekend, what’s next? I wrote about some end-user web features we saw in training:

End-user Web Features
  • Unity assistant – per-user settings manager, like Communications Manager User Options site
  • Unity inbox – view, listen to, forward, reply, etc. to voice messages. Play messages through the web browser or download to PC.

I believe that with some reconfiguration on the back end having to do with the way accounts are keyed (need some affiliation with the PSU access account ID), a proxy written similar to what we did with Call Manager 6, and some gentle but consistent pressure from users for such useful features, we could enable the two listed above. And in time, and depending on where University e-mail is headed presently, we may even be able to deposit voicemail in people’s e-mail boxes. (NOTE: this is my wishlist and not a statement that these things are planned or that I am even working on them… but I’d like to.)

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