Managing voicemail according to how we work
Did you ever try to contact a person (who never answers their phone) and get that annoying message? You hear, “the users mailbox is full”… followed by a message stating that you cannot leave a message at this time. Ok, so…. what am I supposed to do now. Sometimes, a user’s mailbox may be legitimately full because they are really busy. In other cases, the user may not be picking up their messages. Providing various methods for users to access their voice messages allows to Connection to be used the way people work.
Users are able to retrieve their messages via their phone, IMAP client, Cisco’s integrated Messaging Inbox, RSS, or their current Outlook client using ViewMail for Outlook.
I will highlight some of these options here. By using an IMAP client, the user is able to archive messages, by saving them directly to their local workstation. This is a useful feature when combined with a feature called Live Record, allows a user to record their conversation and receive a voice mail recording of the conversation. Users are able to send and retrieve messages and recordings using their client. However, take note that this practice may be denied in some industries.
Why use a client to retrieve messages if the user has a phone anyway?
As stated earlier, features and methods are created to assist the user with the way they currently work. If a user is more accustomed to using the client, Connection provides a number of different methods. Also, the benefit to the organization here is, that if user downloads the message to the workstation, and uses the PC speakers to play the messages, voicemail ports are not used, thereby keeping them available for incoming calls.
Cisco Unity Connection provides a number of features that allow users to access their messages from their phone. With Visual Voicemail, users are able to display a list of messages on their IP phone, retrieve the envelope information and playback the messages directly from their IP phone.
Let’s say that users on the road and need a method to retrieve their messages using a web browser. Then, the RSS solutions may be fit the bill here. Easy to configure and allows the users to retrieve messages using an available browser.
Given all the various features… you design the system the way the customer works.
In the last post coming up for the month of April, I will highlight the focus, purpose and features of my upcoming book on Cisco Unity Connection.
