Table Of Contents

Changing Message Playback Settings

What You Hear When You Check Messages

Enabling the Message Type Menu

Changing Message Playback Order

Changing What Cisco Unity Plays Before and After a Message

Changing Message Playback Settings

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You use the Cisco Unity Assistant to specify your message playback preferences when you check messages by phone. You can use the message playback settings in conjunction with the phone menu settings in the Cisco Unity Assistant to customize many aspects of the Cisco Unity conversation.

This chapter contains the following sections:

•What You Hear When You Check Messages

•Enabling the Message Type Menu

•Changing Message Playback Order

•Changing What Cisco Unity Plays Before and After a Message

To learn more about the Cisco Unity conversation, see the "Working With Cisco Unity by Phone" section.

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Note Cisco Unity does not allow you to dictate what messages you do not want to hear over the phone. So, you cannot use the message playback preferences to cause Cisco Unity to play one type of message and not play another type.

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What You Hear When You Check Messages

When you log on to Cisco Unity by phone, Cisco Unity plays your recorded name and then tells you how many new and saved messages you have. After your message counts, Cisco Unity plays the Main menu:

Key(s)	Task
1	Hear new messages
2	Send a message
3	Review saved messages
4	Change setup options
5	Find a message1

1 Depending on how Cisco Unity is set up at your organization, Message Locator may not be available to you.

Once you choose to play either your new or old messages, Cisco Unity plays your messages in the order you specify in the Cisco Unity Assistant (first ordered by your choice of message type and urgency and then ordered by the time that a message was sent). Alternatively, you can enable the Message Type menu, which Cisco Unity plays after you choose whether to play your new or old messages. The Message Type menu allows you to choose which messages you want to hear by type.

By default, Cisco Unity plays information about a message and the message sender before and after playing the message. What you hear about a message and the message sender depends on whether the message was left by another subscriber or an unidentified caller, as indicated in Table 18-1.

Table 18-1 Message Information You Hear

When the Message Is From	Cisco Unity Plays
Cisco Unity subscriber	Message number, time stamp, and recorded name and/or extension of the subscriber who left the message.
Unidentified caller	Message number and time stamp. Cisco Unity may also play the phone number of the caller, if the number is available and Cisco Unity is set up to do so by your administrator.

You use the Cisco Unity Assistant to specify what information Cisco Unity plays about a message and the message sender before and after playing messages.

Related Topics

•Changing What Cisco Unity Plays When You Log On

•Changing the Time Format Used for Message Time Stamps

•Enabling the Message Type Menu

•Changing Message Playback Order

•Changing What Cisco Unity Plays Before and After a Message

Enabling the Message Type Menu

When it is enabled, Cisco Unity plays the Message Type menu before it plays your new and saved messages so that you can choose which messages you want to hear by type:

Key	Task
1	Voice messages
2	E-mails1
3	Faxes2
4	Receipts3
#	All messages

1 Although the e-mail keys are available in the Message Type menu, Cisco Unity plays e-mails only for Unified Messaging subscribers who also have the text-to-speech option. 2 Although the fax keys are available in the Message Type menu, Cisco Unity plays faxes only when the system is using the fax option. Note that with fax messages, Cisco Unity plays only message properties, such as the sender, date, and time. 3 Depending on how Cisco Unity is set up at your organization, you may not receive all types of receipts.

For each type of message that you chose to hear, Cisco Unity plays the messages in the order that you specify in the Cisco Unity Assistant.

The Message Type menu is particularly handy when you want to check for a certain message type by phone, and not check any others. When the Message Type menu is disabled, you will not hear it. (You will also not hear the Message Type menu when you check deleted messages.) Instead, Cisco Unity simply plays your messages according to the order that you specify.

To Enable the Message Type Menu

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Step 1 In the Cisco Unity Assistant, on the Preferences menu, click Message Playback.

Step 2 Check the Message Type Menu check box.

Step 3 Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click Save.

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Changing Message Playback Order

You can customize the message playback order for your new, saved, and deleted messages in the Cisco Unity Assistant. For new and saved messages, you can use the playback settings to sort messages in order by message type (for example, voice, fax, or e-mail) and by message urgency. In this way, you can specify that Cisco Unity plays your urgent voice messages first, then your urgent faxes, followed by your normal voice messages, and so on.

By default, new and saved messages are sorted by type in the following order:

1. Urgent voice messages

2. Normal voice messages

3. Urgent faxes

4. Normal faxes

5. Urgent e-mails

6. Normal e-mails

7. Receipts and notices

Except for receipts, note that the messages are sorted so that Cisco Unity plays the urgent messages for each message type first. (Receipts are sorted only by the time that they were sent.)

According to the order you specify for new and saved messages, Cisco Unity then plays the messages for each type according to the time that a message was sent, so that either the newest or oldest messages are presented first for each message type. For deleted messages, you can indicate only whether Cisco Unity plays the newest or oldest message first, as Cisco Unity does not sort deleted messages by type.

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Note You cannot change the playback order for Message Locator. When Cisco Unity finds messages based on the criteria that you enter, they are presented to you in order of oldest to newest messages.

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Table 18-2 lists the default order for new, saved, and deleted messages, regardless of type.

Table 18-2 Message Playback Order

Message State	Default Order
New	Oldest message first
Saved	Newest message first
Deleted	Newest message first

To illustrate how message playback order works, Table 18-3 shows the order in which Cisco Unity plays messages when you listen to messages on a Thursday afternoon (based on the default order settings).

Table 18-3 Example of How Message Playback Order Works 

New Messages	Saved Messages	Deleted Messages1
1. Urgent voice message sent Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.	1. Urgent voice message sent Tuesday at 2:13 p.m.	1. Normal voice message sent Thursday 8:30 a.m.
2. Urgent voice message sent Tuesday at 2:13 p.m.	2. Urgent voice message sent Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.	2. Urgent e-mail message sent Wednesday at 4:10 p.m.
3. Normal voice message sent Wednesday at noon.	3. Normal voice message sent Thursday 8:30 a.m.	3. Normal voice message sent Wednesday at noon.
4. Normal voice message sent Thursday at 8:30 a.m.	4. Normal voice message sent Wednesday at noon.	4. Urgent voice message sent Tuesday at 2:13 p.m.
5. Urgent e-mail message sent Wednesday at 4:10 p.m.	5. Urgent e-mail message sent Wednesday at 4:10 p.m.	5. Urgent voice message sent Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.

1 Depending on how Cisco Unity is set up, you may not be able to play deleted messages over the phone.

You can set the order in which Cisco Unity plays your messages only from the Cisco Unity Assistant, not by phone.

To Change Message Playback Order

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Step 1 In the Cisco Unity Assistant, on the Preferences menu, click Message Playback.

Step 2 In the New Message Play Order section, use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to put the list of message types in the order that you want them played.

Step 3 On the Then By menu, click Newest First or Oldest First to specify the message order for all new messages. (Note that this does not allow you to have a particular message type played.)

Step 4 In the Saved Message Play Order section, use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to put the list of message types in the order that you want them played.

Step 5 On the Then By menu, click Newest First or Oldest First to specify the message order for all saved messages.

Step 6 Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click Save.

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Changing What Cisco Unity Plays Before and After a Message

By default, Cisco Unity plays information about a message and the message sender before and after playing the message. You can change what you hear and when you hear it by using the Cisco Unity Assistant.

You can specify whether you want Cisco Unity to play all, none, or a combination of the following options before each message:

Sender's Information	If available, Cisco Unity plays the recorded name of the subscriber who sent a message. Depending on how Cisco Unity is set up, it may also play either the phone number of an unidentified caller (if available) or the extension of the subscriber who sent the message.
Message Number	Cisco Unity announces the sequential number of a message. (For example, "Message 1, a voice message...Message 2, a voice message...") Although you can turn off message counts in the Cisco Unity Assistant, it is handy to know how many messages you have. (This is especially true for saved messages as you can skip ahead or back to a particular saved message by entering the message number.)
Time the Message Was Sent	Cisco Unity announces the day, date, and time that a message was sent.

The options are a subset of the message properties that Cisco Unity can play. You can also specify whether you want Cisco Unity to play the time that a message was sent after each message.

For receipts, the information that Cisco Unity plays differs slightly. Whether Cisco Unity plays the time stamp and reason for a receipt before or after the list of recipient(s), depends on how many recipients are associated with the receipt:

Table 18-4 Receipt Information You Hear

Recipients Associated with Receipt	Time Stamp and Reason Is Played
1	After the recipient name
More than 1	Before the recipient list

To Change What Cisco Unity Plays Before and After a Message

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Step 1 In the Cisco Unity Assistant, on the Preferences menu, click Message Playback.

Step 2 Scroll down to the Before Playing Each Message Play section, and check or uncheck any or all of the following check boxes to specify what information Cisco Unity plays before each message:

•Sender's Information

•Message Number

•Time the Message Was Sent

Step 3 In the After Playing Each Message Play section, check or uncheck the Time the Message Was Sent check box to specify whether Cisco Unity plays the message time stamp before playing each message.

Step 4 Click Save.

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Related Topics

•Changing What Cisco Unity Plays When You Log On

•Changing the Time Format Used for Message Time Stamps

•Managing Receipts