Unified message settings in Unified Communication

In fact, unified communication involves a lot of content and technologies. We are familiar with video conferencing, which is one of the most popular unified communication services by many vendors), instant messaging, mobile collaboration, and unified messaging. As the basis, let's take a look at the operation process of unified messaging.

In actual work, the basic operation of the Microsoft Unified Communication Platform is implemented by unified messaging, which is ignored by many system administrators. As a result, the subsequent work is difficult to expand. Based on my previous work experience, I will summarize this work into five strokes.

Step 1: Create the name of the unified message dial-up plan.

On the Unified Communication Platform, you must specify a name for the unified message plan when creating a unified message plan. Generally, there are two ways to create this name. One is to manually specify the name, and the other is to use the name of the mailbox policy. To facilitate subsequent management, I suggest using the name of the mailbox policy as the name of the unified message dialing plan. However, you need to pay attention to the details here. This details is the length limit of the dial plan name.

By default, the dial Plan Name field can be 64 characters in length, but it is best not to exceed 49 characters in actual naming. This is mainly because the system also creates a default UM mailbox policy when creating a dial-up plan. Generally, the name of this UM mailbox policy is the name of the unified message plan. However, there is a problem here, that is, the name length of the UM mailbox policy is shorter than the name length of the unified message plan, and the maximum length is 49 characters. Therefore, if a unified message plan is defined with a name length of more than 49 characters, an error may occur when a unified message plan is generated. This may be a vulnerability in Exchange. Many administrators who use this platform for the first time often perform the following operations here. Therefore, when defining a unified message Plan Name, pay attention to the length of the Plan Name. This BUG may be fixed in later versions.

Step 2: Customize the phone user interface for the unified messaging dial-up plan.

On the Unified Communication Platform, a telephone user interface is displayed when you use the unified messaging platform to access the voice mails in your mailbox. Because voice mail is different from normal mail, the Administrator often needs to define this interface according to the actual situation of the enterprise. If you need to define the longest call duration and longest recording duration (it is directly related to the mailbox system and the user's predefined storage space), the number of input failures before disconnection, the number of login failures before disconnection, and the number of input retries (this is mainly for some security settings), the user's default language and available language (if the system involves multi-language applications, this configuration is very important) and other related parameters. For ease of management, the changes made when the unified message dialing plan configures the phone user interface for users will affect the unified message dialing plan and all users associated with it.

Simply put, the Administrator does not need to configure the telephone user interface for each user individually. Instead, you can divide enterprise users into several groups and then set an independent Unified Messaging dial-up plan for each group. Then configure the telephone user interface for the user in the unified message plan. In this way, as long as the user is associated with a specific unified messaging dial-up plan, there will be a relatively independent user interface. For example, the management layer and general employees can be divided into different dial-up plans to achieve different access needs of these users. This is consistent with group policy management.

Step 3: select the appropriate audio encoding and decoder for the unified message plan.

If voice mail is involved in the unified messaging platform of Unified Communication, you also need to select the appropriate audio encoding and decoder for the voice mail. Three audio codecs are provided in Exchange: Microsoft Media audio codecs, group system mobile codecs, and pulse code modulated linear codecs. Different decoders are used. The formats of the generated audio files are different. In addition, the quality of the voice and the size of the audio file are also different. By default, the system uses the Microsoft Media audio codecs. The generated audio file is an audio file with the WMA extension.

I believe that when selecting an audio decoder, you need to pay attention to the following two issues.

First, it is best to use only one audio codecs on the same message plan platform. If each user uses a different decoder, the conversion may affect the access efficiency of the audio file. In addition, the file may be misunderstood. Therefore, you can set different unified message dialing plans for different users (for example, to configure the telephone access interface), but it is best to specify the same audio decoder for different unified message dialing plans. At the same time, it should be noted that the WMA file compatibility is still good. Currently, some mainstream MP3 players basically support this format of files, and the file compression is good, and the Occupied disk space is not large. Therefore, unless there are special requirements for sound quality, this format is the first choice for enterprises.

Second, if the administrator uses a 64-bit operating system platform, there is a special requirement when deploying the audio decoder. That is, if Microsoft audio codecs are selected, the Windows Media Encoder must be installed. This is a problem encountered during the platform's excessive stages and cannot be overcome for the time being.

Step 4: manage whether users can receive faxes.

By default, you can use this mailbox to receive and send faxes as long as you have set a unified messaging dial-up plan. However, in actual work, this situation is often restricted due to security needs. For example, only a specific user can receive a fax. To enable a user to receive a fax, both of the following conditions must be met. First, it must be set to allow the user to accept incoming fax calls on the Unified Messaging Server associated with the user's dial-up plan. If this dial-up plan involves multiple unified messaging servers (for the sake of Server Load balancer, enterprises may deploy multiple unified messaging service periods) similar settings must be performed on multiple unified messaging servers. Second, you must set this unified messaging dial-up plan to allow sending faxes to UM-enabled users. The system will allow the user to receive faxes only when both conditions are met. On the contrary, to prevent users from receiving faxes, simply cancel a condition. This is a simple operation for unified messaging on the Unified Communication Platform.

In actual work, the main problem encountered is troubleshooting. If a user reports an error and cannot receive a fax, the system administrator may only consider one condition. Note that the preceding two conditions must be met at the same time. Otherwise, the fax cannot be normally received.

Tip 5: We recommend that you enable the non-delivery report function.

On the Unified Communication Platform, when a common email cannot reach the recipient, the system automatically reports an error. When the recipient cannot receive the fax, the fax system will report an error report. If you use the unified messaging platform to send a fax or voice mail, do you need this similar report? This report is called a delivery report. By default, when the unified messaging platform sends a voice mail, if the voice mail cannot be sent to a specified recipient, the unified messaging platform generally does not send this non-delivery report. I don't know why Microsoft has set this default value. However, to be certain, this non-delivery report is very useful for analyzing the cause of failed voice mail delivery and resolving faults in the transfer. In addition, when the voice mail cannot be delivered on time, it is necessary for the system to give users a friendly reminder. Therefore, we recommend that you enable this non-delivered report when deploying the unified messaging platform.

To enable this function, you only need to follow the steps below.

First, find the Organization configuration node in the management console, and then select the "unified message" node. Open the node, select the unified dial plan tab, and click Properties in the window.

Next, a General tab is displayed on the dial plan properties page, and the check box of "Send not delivered report when mail fails" is selected. Click OK to save.

Generally, this undelivered report is only sent to the sender of the email. However, for management purposes, the Administrator also hopes that this undelivered report can be copied to a specified email account, such as the administrator email account. In this case, you can also use the log or warning system.