Help with NEC "unified messaging" 3

[somedea]

Can anyone recommend a unified messaging product (but NOT Exchange 2007) that will work with an NEC Elite IPK II phone system and accomplish the following:
Leave the voice messages on both the phone and in the Outlook inbox AND send the message to a PDA as an email with a voice message attachment. (Our PDA cell phones are already setup to receive email.)
We recently purchased an NEC phone system with a Unified Messaging package. Not realizing that there were many different flavors of unified messaging, I was very disappointed in what we got. What we have now is either View Mail for Microsoft Messaging, which leaves the email on the phone and the Outlook inbox, but only sends a notification of a voice message to the PDA(no .wav file attached), OR Elite email, which forwards the voicemail to the Outlook inbox as a .wav file and successfully sends it to the PDA as an attachment that plays, but totally removes the messages from the telephone. We want users to have the choice of listening to their messages on their office phones if desired for privacy's sake, but we still want them to be able to get their messages on their PDA cell phones when out of the office.
Does anyone know if NEC makes a product that will do this?
Or of a 3rd party product we could use?
Thanks!

 

[gmannatl]

Without using Exchange I don't believe that you are going to have any options. The reason is because you need an intelligent email server in order to keep the boxes completely "Unified". If you were using exchange there are several options. This first being an AD-120/UM8500 which is an NEC/Active Voice Product. There are also two other OEM manufacturers that NEC works with (Zeacom/UCB and BBX Vuesion Server), however I don't believe either of these would have integration with the IPK II. I know that BBX has some systems working on IPKII's but I am not sure if they fully support it. Their website is bbxtech.com. Either way, without exchange you don't really have an option. The first option completely integrates with exchange, and the two OEM products use a "Role" account via IMAP to keep track of the emails sent from the VM to the Exchange server. This way information is relayed both ways to keep the status of the message current. When you are simply using POP accounts there is no way for the email server and VM to communicate this status to each other.

 

[somedea]

Gmannatl:
We do have an Exchange server, just not Exchange 2007, with its new UM features. We have Exchange 2003 server. Are you saying the AD-120/UM8500 will give me the integration I need with Exchange 2003?
Thanks,
Dana

 

[gmannatl]

That is correct. It can use either exchange or SQL as it's data store and offers "TRUE Unified Messaging" as opposed to what I call "Integrated" Messaging like the EliteMail LX. It actually creates the mailboxes based on the AD in the domain environment. It is MUCH more expensive than the LX you currently have, but offers a few other features in addition to it's stronger UM.

 

[PhoneTech88]

There is a way to put a message in the persons mailbox and send a .wav file to an email address at the same time, with some extra programming, but you will have to delete the message from both places. If that would help post back and I could point you or your vendor in the right direction.

 

[somedea]

Thanks, PhoneTech88, that might help. The only solution my vendor has come up with is to create a second voice mail box for each user who wants to get the .wav files on their Blackberry. This solution means that the users get 2 emails for every voicemail. If your solution only involves one email per voicemail, I'm fine with having to delete it twice.

 

[bsuggs]

Greetings . . . we recently implemented a UM8500 VM system with VMO for the client, which is Outlook XP/Exchange 2003. The client piece is fairly straightforward, but our BlackBerry users receive only message indicators, not the actual WAV file. It's our understanding that we'll need to upgrade our BlackBerry Enterprise Server to v4.1 before these WAV files will play. We're currently at v4.0.

Not sure if that helps you. ??

My personal work-around is an Outlook Rule, which fowards the email to a second email address I monitor on my BlackBerry (Pearl). I can listen to that attached WAV file. I do indeed get two emails, but it's handy nonetheless. It'll get me by until we upgrade BES.

We do not "support" this option for our pool of Users, but it's available for those few special cases (if you know whadamean!)

 

[PhoneTech88]

Now this is just a workaround not an NEC supported solution. I will use an example of extension 100 and I am assumming you do not have any 800 series extension. I am also assumming you have mailbox 100 setup already.

1. create a mailbox of 800 and name it mailbox 100 wav.

2. create a message group that contains mailbox 100 and 800 in it and name that XXX (what ever you want but you need to remember which is which for each person you do this for.

3. goto mailbox 100 and change the after greeting setting from "take a message" to "take a message for group" and pick XXX that has 100 and 800 in it.

4. take all the email options away from mailbox 100.

5. set mailbox 800 up to forward the voicemail to the email system.

What will happen know when you leave a message for extension 100 it puts it in both mailboxes. Mailbox 100 will light the light of the DTerm and you can retreive it from the phone and mailbox 800 will forward it as a wav file to the email system.

Like I mentioned before you still need to delete the message from mailbox 100 and delete the wav file emails seperately for every message.

 

[somedea]

Thanks, PhoneTech88, I will try that on my mailbox and see how it works for me. Sounds like it will be a good workaround for us!

 

[somedea]

PhoneTech88,
I tried your solution. It is working really well, with just one issue:
After listening to the message on the NEC phone, it remains as a new message until I delete or save it, and the message lamp stays lit - messages used to go to "old" after listening to them, and turn off the lamp.
Is this a setting I have screwed up? Because if I can fix this, we will be all set!
Thanks again!

 

[PhoneTech88]

Somedea,

The best way to check this is to compare the mailbox options with a mailbox that automatically archives the message verse the options in your mailbox. Normally the system will leave it as new until you do something with it.

Whitout seeing it myself it is hard to pin point what is different about your mailbox.

 

[gmannatl]

Thanks for the workaround PhoneTech88. I keep forgetting that the leave message for group is an option now. I think this is just about the only new feature on an ActiveVoice VM for quite a while!! (That's actually worth mentioning or using anyway)