Cisco Unity 4.2 For Microsoft Exchange [Cisco Unity]

The Cisco® Unified Communications system of voice and IP communications products and applications enables organizations to communicate more effectively-helping them to streamline business processes, reach the right resource the first time, and positively impact the top and bottom line. The Cisco Unified Communications portfolio is a key part of the Cisco Business Communications Solution-an integrated solution for organizations of all sizes which also includes network infrastructure, security, and network management products, wireless connectivity, and a lifecycle services approach, along with flexible deployment and outsourced management options, end-user and partner financing packages, and third-party communications applications.

The Cisco IP Communications messaging portfolio provides three options:

• Cisco Unity®-delivers unified messaging and intelligent voicemail capabilities to enterprise and mid-market customers with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino environments

• Cisco Unity Connection-combines integrated messaging, speech recognition, and call routing rules into an easy-to-manage system for midmarket customers with up to 1500 users

• Cisco Unity Express-provides cost-effective integrated voice messaging and automated attendant capabilities for small and medium-sized branch office environments with up to 120 users

Cisco Unity-an integral component of the Cisco Unified Communications system-is a foundational element in bringing unified communications solutions to enterprise-scale organizations. It delivers powerful unified messaging (e-mail, voice, and fax messages sent to one inbox) and intelligent voice messaging (full-featured voicemail with advanced functions) to improve communications, boost productivity, and enhance customer service capabilities across your organization.

The Cisco Unity server architecture is truly unified with your data network, minimizing installation, administration, and maintenance costs. Built on a platform that can scale to meet your organization's needs as it grows, Cisco Unity also uses streaming media and an intuitive Web browser-based system administration interface that makes life easier for the people who install and support your system, ultimately lowering your organization's total cost of ownership.

Cisco Unity Unified Messaging provides advanced, convergence-based communication services and integrates them with the desktop applications you use every day. With Cisco Unity Unified Messaging, you can listen to your e-mail over the telephone, check voice messages from the Internet, and send, receive, or forward faxes to wherever you are. Cisco Unity Voice Messaging features robust automated-attendant functions that include intelligent routing and easily customizable call-screening and message-notification options.

INTELLIGENT VOICE MESSAGING

At its heart, Cisco Unity is a powerful and intelligent voice-messaging system. Individual users interact with the system in the way that is most comfortable and convenient for them. The self-enrollment conversation is so easy to use that new employees can personalize their voice mailboxes and begin using the Cisco Unity system within minutes. Cisco Unity provides full menu options to guide users through its many features and then, as they become more experienced, gives them the option to switch to brief menus for faster system navigation. Regardless of their level of comfort or expertise, context-sensitive help is only a single touch-tone away.

When new messages arrive, Cisco Unity can announce the number, type, and priority of the messages received, the date and time they were sent, or deliver messages to another extension, mobile telephone, or remote location. When listening to your messages, you can use telephone touch-tones to adjust volume control and playback speed, and forward, rewind, and pause messages. And to help colleagues and customers reach you more efficiently, you can record up to five different personal greetings. You may, for example, want a specific greeting when you are out of the office or if your line is busy.

POWERFUL UNIFIED MESSAGING

In the past, e-mail, voice, and fax messages were delivered as separate media to different locations. The telephone provided the sole means for accessing voice messages and then could play messages back only in the order received. Faxes had to be manually retrieved from the nearest fax machine.

Cisco Unity Unified Messaging integrates transparently with your Microsoft Outlook e-mail client to make handling all your messages-e-mail, voice, and fax-easy and convenient, whether you are in the office or on the road. An intuitively designed interface makes it easy to access e-mail, voice, and fax messages from your desktop PC. Icons provide simple visual descriptions of each message type and because every message is delivered to one inbox, you can see the number, type, and status of all your communications at a single glance. You also can reply to, forward, and save your messages-regardless of media type-in public or personal Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Outlook folders with just a click of the mouse.

With the text-to-speech (TTS) capability of Cisco Unity Unified Messaging, you get information about all your messages-and even hear the text portion of e-mail messages-over the telephone. You can then respond with a voice message and, depending on the capabilities of your fax server, print e-mail, attachments, and incoming faxes on a nearby fax machine.

Cisco Unity Unified Messaging also integrates with smart phones and other mobile devices to deliver all-in-one messaging anytime, anywhere. For example, mobile workers with Treo and BlackBerry devices can double-click to play a voice message within their PDA e-mail applications.

WEB ACCESS TO VOICEMAIL

The Cisco Unity Inbox is a browser based message access console that provides a dedicated voicemail inbox that can be used to deliver unified-messaging functions to voicemail only users. Users can use the Cisco Unity inbox interface to listen to listen to any message in their voicemail inbox via either their PC or phone. With the Cisco Unity Inbox, you can receive notification of new voicemail messages right in your e-mail inbox using SMTP notification. Message notification provides an HTML link that you can click on to automatically launch the Cisco Unity Inbox message access console, enabling you to play voice messages in WAV file format.

IMAP CLIENT ACCESS TO VOICEMAIL

Cisco Unity provides support for visual access to voice messages with Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) clients. In addition, customers using Microsoft Outlook can use ViewMail for Outlook for additional messaging functions in PC mailboxes.

PERSONAL WEB ADMINISTRATION

Cisco Unity gives subscribers the ability to customize their personal settings from using the Cisco Unity Assistant, a dynamic interface in the browser-based Cisco Unity Personal Communications Assistant. Cisco Unity Assistant reduces the workload for system administrators and gives subscribers additional flexibility to customize Cisco Unity to suit changing demands in their work environment. Subscribers can quickly and easily establish or change personal settings such as their voicemail options, security code, personal distribution lists, and message-delivery options. For ease of administration and security reasons, the system administrator decides which features/settings individual subscribers or classes of service can access.

BUILT FOR MIGRATION TO IP TELEPHONY

Designed for an IP environment, Cisco Unity plays a central role in the migration of your telephony infrastructure from time-division multiplexing (TDM) to IP. With IP, it is less expensive for you to deploy a comprehensive communications solution because you have a single network for both voice and data. Cisco Unity interoperates with your traditional voicemail system and supports both Cisco Unified CallManager and leading traditional telephone systems-even simultaneously-to help you transition to IP telephony at your own pace and protect your existing infrastructure investments. Cisco Unity even integrates with multiple vendor private branch exchange (PBX) systems at the same time, enabling branch office consolidation that reduces costs by centralizing messaging into a single system. In addition, Cisco Unity Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) integration provides native support for SIP proxy servers, designated SIP phones and clients, and SIP-enabled access gateways, to give SIP users access to the full array of benefits the Cisco Unity system delivers.

Cisco Unity complements the entire Cisco Unified Communications family of products-including Cisco Unified CallManager, Cisco Personal Assistant, and Cisco Unified Contact Center-by providing advanced capabilities that unify data and voice. Also, because it is designed for a converged network, Cisco Unity provides a solid foundation for rolling out future convergence-based communications services.

SIMPLIFY ADMINISTRATION; REDUCE COSTS

The components of Cisco Unity Unified Messaging extend the power of your Microsoft Exchange server. This eliminates the inefficiencies and limitations imposed by multiple messaging systems, and simplifies the way you access and manage your system. Cisco Unity Unified Messaging uses Microsoft Exchange message store and directory services to unify your system administration, collecting all messages in a single store and providing you with a single address directory service.

By sharing a single directory with the data network, Cisco Unity Unified Messaging eliminates the redundancy of user account information maintained by various applications-such as e-mail and voicemail systems. Cisco Unity Unified Messaging also saves you hours of time in initial installation with a feature that imports the Microsoft Windows 2000 or Microsoft Exchange accounts directory to create subscriber lists automatically. With the Cisco Unity approach, all messages are centrally stored, administered, and controlled, dramatically reducing the amount of time spent on support and maintenance, and minimizing the traffic on your LAN.

At the same time, Cisco Unity Unified Messaging also uses the Cisco Unity Message Repository to increase message store availability if Microsoft Exchange goes offline. Cisco Unity Message Repository helps enable Cisco Unity Unified Messaging to continue taking new voice messages when the e-mail system or network is offline. System subscribers also can retrieve these messages, minimizing service disruption.

Cisco Unity Unified Messaging takes full advantage of such powerful Microsoft Exchange features as digital networking, automatic message replication, message rules, foldering, and inbox assistant support. Through Microsoft Exchange e-mail gateway services, Cisco Unity Unified Messaging also can work with e-mail clients that support Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), and IMAP4.

AN EASY-TO-USE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION INTERFACE

Cisco Unity features an intuitive and easy to use graphical user interface which results in greater productivity for your organization. Moreover, Cisco Unity simplifies system administration with its embedded Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), single message store, and single directory service, providing superior performance and reliability. In addition to housing data in a central store, administration tasks can be handled conveniently and securely from a Web-based system administration console that IT staff can access from any networked PC using Internet Explorer.

The Cisco Unity system administration console minimizes the complexity of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Exchange so you do not have to be a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) to administer the system. This interface integrates with Microsoft Windows 2000 through the use of snap-in HTML, and allows Cisco Unity Unified Messaging to be configured and monitored from anywhere on the Internet using Internet Explorer instead of proprietary Windows-based interfaces. Additionally, Cisco Unity is supported on Windows 2003 for customers who have existing Exchange 2003 or Windows 2003 environments.

LOCALIZATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS

Cisco Unity is localized to meet the needs of customers around the globe. Localized versions are available in multiple languages-five dialects of English (Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States), Arabic (Formal), three dialects of Chinese (Cantonese, Mainland Mandarin, and Taiwan Mandarin), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Flemish*, French (European and Canadian), German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish*, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Russian*, two dialects of Spanish (Latin American and European), and Swedish. In addition, depending on the language, these versions feature everything from system prompts and subscriber conversations to the browser-based administration consoles and product documentation in the language of your choice.

*New localizations in Cisco Unity 4.2

NETWORKING CAPABILITY

Cisco Unity offers an optional digital networking module that helps enable the system to connect to other Cisco Unity servers at the same site through the LAN, or remote sites using a WAN or the Internet. Digital networking makes communicating with coworkers at remote locations fast and efficient by giving you the ability to send subscriber-to-subscriber messages anywhere in the world.

With digital networking you can use the global addressing feature-listing all system subscribers in a central directory-to quickly and conveniently send a message to a coworker in another time zone. Subscriber-to-subscriber messages offer more reply options to the recipient, making it simpler to respond to an e-mail with a voice message, for example. Also, when retrieving messages over the telephone, voicemail from system subscribers is played with the sender's recorded name for greater recognition.

A powerful message networking option available with Cisco Unity is the Cisco Unity Bridge. With Cisco Unity Bridge, you can send subscriber-to-subscriber messages to anyone in your organization who resides on a TDM-based Avaya or Octel voicemail system supporting Octel Analog Networking. In addition, you have the added capability to simply "reply to" a networked message with a single touch-tone key. With Cisco Unity Bridge, users maintain advanced messaging capabilities on both systems as they migrate to Cisco Unity.

Cisco Unity also provides optional Voice Profile for Internet Mail (VPIM [digital]) and Audio Messaging Interchange Specification (AMIS [analog]) networking modules that allow message interchange between disparate messaging systems that also support these industry-standard messaging protocols. With VPIM or AMIS, customers who are migrating to Cisco Unity can continue to exchange messages with internal system subscribers who reside on a third-party messaging system, helping to ensure a smooth system migration.

CISCO UNITY FEATURES

Voice Messaging Overview

• Intelligent voice messaging allows users to interact with the system in the way that is most comfortable and convenient for them.

• Users select telephone-user-interface (TUI) style and settings by individual preference.

• Customizable notifications with devices such as a pager or mobile phone help users to more effectively manage voicemail communications.

Unified Messaging Overview

• E-mail, voice, and fax messages are organized in the user's e-mail inbox, providing centralized communications control.

• Voice and fax messages can be accessed from a desktop PC, laptop computer with Internet access, or any touch-tone telephone.

• A TTS module reads e-mail messages over the telephone in clear, spoken words.

• Retrieve Unity voicemail messages directly from BlackBerry or Treo mail applications.

• Cisco Unity Unified Messaging takes advantage of the existing infrastructure by using the Microsoft Exchange message store.

• Its unified architecture allows IT staff to set one backup procedure, one message storage policy, and one security policy.

Interoperability and Availability

• VPIM support for multiple types of PBXs with one centralized Cisco Unity system**-Digital interoperability

• AMIS support-Analog interoperability

• Cisco Unity Bridge-Interoperability with traditional Avaya or Octel voicemail systems

· Networked messages with Cisco Unity Express with VPIM*

• Cisco Unity Message Repository-Manage new voice messages when the e-mail system or network is offline

• QSIG and DPNSS support-Enhanced integration with traditional private branch exchange (PBX)

• Failover capability-Prevents service disruption if the unified-messaging server is unavailable, delivering enhanced reliability and serviceability

**Multiple PBX support is a new feature in Cisco Unity 4.2

Message Access from the TUI

• Play and process messages (repeat, reply, forward, delete, save, mark as new, hear day or time stamp, or skip to the next message)

• Deliver messages to users at designated telephone numbers-for example, home, cellular or mobile telephone, or remote office telephone

• Reverse, pause, or fast forward during message playback

• Control volume and speed during message playback

• Pause or resume during message recording

• Address messages to multiple recipients

• Perform global addressing

• Message go-to-locate message by number in saved messages

· Locate message by name or extension

• Record message and specify as regular, urgent, private, or future delivery

• Record message and request return receipt

• Switch between spelling name and extension when addressing message

• Live reply-Immediately reply to messages from other subscribers by calling them back directly from the TUI

• Forward faxes to any fax machine from a touch-tone telephone

• Post greeting recordings

Message Access from the PC

• Access voice messages visually with IMAP client*; note that customers can deploy either Cisco Unity Inbox or IMAP client access users.

• With VCR-style interface in e-mail client, play, rewind, pause, or fast forward voice messages with a few mouse clicks.*

• Send voice and fax messages to anyone who can receive Internet e-mail.

• Download all message types and respond to or create new messages offline.

• Save voice and fax messages along with e-mail in public or personal Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Outlook folders for a complete record of your communications.

• Apply Microsoft Exchange Inbox Assistant rules to voice and fax mail.

End-User Features

• Customize your message-notification options, manage personal greetings, or change passwords with Cisco Unity Assistant (the Cisco Unity Personal Communications Assistant Web browser-based personal administrator).

• Select conversation type; full or brief prompts are available.

• Address and then record a message, or record and then address a message.

• Record up to five personal greetings (alternate, busy, internal, off-hours, or standard).

• Specify the order in which messages are presented over the phone, by message type (voice, fax, or e-mail), urgency, or LIFO/FIFO.

• Create private distribution lists and address messages to them through TUI and /or GUI.

• Set an expiration date for any personal greeting.

• Manage an alternate greeting, require callers to listen to full greeting, or notify users when a greeting is on.

• Provide message notification for new messages through devices such as SMTP text, pagers, and phone destinations.

• Provide message notification with Short Message Service (SMS) text messaging for mobile users; Cisco Unity supports the Short Message Peer to Peer (SMPP) 3.4 protocol for interoperability with all major Short Message Service Center providers.

• With a cascade message-notification feature, additional notification types can be sent if a message is not retrieved.

• Select whether message counts are announced; type, totals, saved, and new counts are available.

• Specify whether Cisco Unity announces a transferred call.

• Specify call forward to a personal greeting or busy greeting.

• Specify an after-greeting action; after a subscriber greeting, callers can be directed to leave a message, sign in, or hang up, or they can be sent to call handlers, a directory handler, an interview handler, or a subscriber.

System Administration Overview

• Cisco Unity takes advantage of your communications infrastructure investment by integrating with Cisco Unified CallManager and leading traditional telephone systems-even simultaneously-paving the way for a smooth transition to IP telephony.

• Cisco Unity natively supports SIP proxy servers, designated SIP phones and clients, and SIP-enabled access gateways.

• Intuitive browser-based system administration console and tools simplify installation, maintenance, and daily use and enable maintenance from any PC on the network, saving time, expense, and effort.

• Cisco Unity Assistant (the Cisco Unity Personal Communications Assistant Web browser-based personal administrator) allows IT staff to enable end users to manage more of their own accounts, saving time and decentralizing routine administration.

• Superior component-based server architecture provides a solid and flexible foundation for future growth.

• Innovative use of streaming media provides efficient audio delivery.

• Fault-tolerant system tools include robust security, file replication, event logging, and optional software Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) levels 0-5.

• Cisco Unity offers full localization in U.S. English, French, German, and Japanese-including system prompts, subscriber conversations, browser-based administration consoles, and product documentation.

• Localized telephone system prompts are available in multiple languages, including five dialects of English (Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States), Arabic (Formal), three dialects of Chinese (Cantonese, Mainland Mandarin, and Taiwan Mandarin), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Flemish*, French (European and Canadian), German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish*, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Russian*, two dialects of Spanish (Latin American and European), and Swedish.

*New localizations in Cisco Unity 4.2

• Cisco Unity supports TTY conversation for accessibility.

• Cisco Unity is scalable to 96 ports and 7500 unified-messaging users per server (dependent on server type, refer to Cisco Unity Supported Platforms List). These servers are then networked to support larger enterprise environments.

System Administration Features

• Alternate extensions-Configured by system administrator or by user

• Alternate key mappings for message-retrieval to aid users in transitioning from their existing voicemail system

• Automatic gain control that gives subscribers consistent message volume playback levels

• Configurable billing ID

• Ability to browse to another Cisco Unity Administrator on a networked Cisco Unity server

• Call holding queue

• Call handlers that accept calls, play recorded prompts, route calls, and accept messages

• Caller ID

• Configurable call routing and auto attendant

• Configurable call screening

• Class of service to control subscriber access to features

• Ability to create subscribers individually or in bulk

• Cross-server live reply for Cisco Unified CallManager deployments

• Cross-server logon for Cisco Unified CallManager deployments

• Day and time stamp for messages

• Directory handlers to manage how callers search directory

• Directory search by spelling a subscriber name, allowing entry of up to 24 letters

• Easy mailbox access from personal greetings; log in to TUI without entering ID

• Encrypted Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP) and secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (sRTP) for Cisco Unified CallManager integrations

• Event logging

• Failover-Automatic or manual

• Failback-Automatic or manual

• Full mailbox warning

• Guided installation

• Configurable list of observed holidays

• Hospitality

· Guest conversation customized for hotel and resort industry

· Property management systems (PMS) interface (requires purchase of PMS hotel communication software from Percipia Networks)

• Interview handlers to collect recorded input from callers

• Identified subscriber messaging (ISM) between networked Cisco Unity servers in the same dialing domain

• Ability to configure how Cisco Unity handles messages that are interrupted by disconnected calls

• Message-waiting indicator (MWI)

• Ability to move subscriber mailboxes without shutting down Cisco Unity system

• Multiple administrative levels to control access to pages in system administration GUI by class of service (read, modify, or delete rights)

• Multiple audio codec support

• Multiple time-zone support

• Music on hold

• Nondelivery or delivery receipt reason details presented in GUI inbox

• OS, message store, and third-party software support

· Message store support: Microsoft Exchange 2000, and Microsoft Exchange 2003 (for Cisco Unity Unified Messaging)

· Support for Exchange 2000 and 2003 clustering

· Windows 2000 Server on the Cisco Unity server

· Windows 2000 Advanced Server on the Cisco Unity server

· Windows Server 2003 on the Cisco Unity server (refer to release notes for details)

· Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition on the Cisco Unity server (refer to release notes for details)

· Support for data protection software

· Support for remote-access software

· Support for monitoring software

• Public distribution lists; users can specify those to which new users will be added

• Configurable restriction tables

• Exclude return receipts registry controlled feature

• Configurable schedules

• Self-enrollment for subscribers to set password, record voice name, and specify directory listing

• Shared subscriber licenses among networked Cisco Unity servers (license pooling)

• Status monitor to give the system administrators real-time status of fax and telephone ports, reports in progress, and system configuration

• System broadcast messages for single Cisco Unity server deployments and multiple server deployments

• Configurable system greetings

• 12- and 24-hour clock support for time stamps

• Automatic system time clock adjustment for daylight savings time

• TUI greetings administrator (Cisco Unity Greetings Administrator)

Fax

• Optional Cisco Fax Server, which is a full-featured fax solution based on the market-leading Captaris RightFax 9.0 product line

• Optional third-party fax server as documented in the Cisco Unity System Requirements, and supported hardware and software; refer to: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6178/index.html

Security

• Host intrusion prevention system-Cisco Security Agent standalone agent to protect Cisco Unity servers from worm and virus attacks; optional Cisco Security Agent management console

• Password and PIN security policy options to enforce expiration, complexity, reuse, and lockout

• Optional RSA Secure-ID 2-factor one-time PIN authentication server interface

• Call-restriction tables to prevent toll fraud

• Security event logging and reports of failed login and account lockouts to help detect "PIN cracker" attack attempts

• Secure, private messaging to prevent the playing of a private message accidentally forwarded to someone outside the enterprise

• Secure Realtime Transport Protocol (sRTP) and signaling encryption to ensure secure communication between Cisco Unity and Cisco Unified CallManager systems

• Subscriber PIN reset feature in Cisco Unity Communication Assistant to reduce help desk calls and operating expenses

• Message archiving utilities to enforce corporate electronic records-retention policies

• Support for HTTPS for secure Web access to Cisco Unity Unified Messaging

Reports

• Administrative Access Activity Report

• AMIS Out Traffic Report

• AMIS In Traffic Report

• Call Handler Traffic Report

• Distribution Lists Report

• Event Log Report

• Failed Login Report

• Outcall Billing Report

• Port Usage Report

• Subscribers Report

• Subscriber Message Activity Report

• System Configuration Report

• Transfer Billing Report

• Unresolved References Report

For a full list and description of Cisco Unity reports, refer to the "Cisco Unity System Administration Guide," "Reports" chapter.

CISCO UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES AND SUPPORT

Using the Cisco Lifecycle Services approach, Cisco Systems and its partners offer a broad portfolio of end-to-end services to support the Cisco Unified Communications system. These services are based on proven methodologies for deploying, operating, and optimizing IP communications solutions. Upfront planning and design services, for example, can help you meet aggressive deployment schedules and minimize network disruption during implementation. Operate services reduce the risk of communications downtime with expert technical support. Optimize services enhance solution performance for operational excellence. Cisco and its partners offer a system-level service and support approach that can help you create and maintain a resilient, converged network that meets your business needs.

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Cisco Unity

Cisco Unity 4.2 For Microsoft Exchange

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