Understanding Unified Messaging Subscriber Access

Applies to: Exchange Server 2010

When you're deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging (UM), you must understand subscriber access and the features included with Exchange 2010 that depend on subscriber access. This topic describes subscriber access and how it's used in Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging to let subscribers, also known as UM-enabled users, access their Exchange 2010 mailbox.

Subscriber Access

A subscriber is an internal business user or network user who's enabled for Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging. Subscriber access is used by users to access their individual mailboxes to retrieve e-mail, voice messages, contacts, and calendaring information. Outlook Voice Access is an Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging feature that lets subscribers access their Exchange 2010 mailbox.

When you enable subscriber access for Exchange 2010 UM-enabled users, you must install the Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging server role on the computer that's running Exchange 2010 and verify that at least one of each of the following have been created:

• A UM dial plan
• A UM mailbox policy
• A UM IP gateway
• A UM hunt group

When you configure subscriber access, you configure the UM dial plan to have a subscriber access number. The telephone number or number that's configured on the UM dial plan is the telephone number that subscribers will use to access their Exchange 2010 mailboxes over the telephone using Outlook Voice Access. The subscriber access feature included with Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging resembles other unified messaging solutions. However, Exchange 2010 offers more advanced features than other unified messaging solutions. For more information about how to create or modify UM dial plans and enable subscriber access, see Create a UM Dial Plan

For more information about how to enable a user for Unified Messaging, see Enable a User for Unified Messaging.

Return to top

Outlook Voice Access

There are two Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging user interfaces available to subscribers: the Telephone User Interface (TUI) and the Voice User Interface (VUI). These two interfaces together are called Outlook Voice Access. Outlook Voice Access can be used when subscribers access the Unified Messaging system from an external or internal telephone to access their individual mailbox, including their personal e-mail, voice messages, contacts, and calendaring information in their Exchange 2010 mailbox.

If you want to prevent users from receiving voice mail but want to allow them access to their Exchange 2010 mailbox using Outlook Voice Access, you can enable users for Unified Messaging and configure the users' mailbox with an extension number that isn't currently being used by another user in the organization.

For a copy of the Microsoft Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging Outlook Voice Access Quick Start Guide, see the Microsoft Download Center.

The following scenarios demonstrate how Outlook Voice Access can be used for subscriber access from a telephone:

• Access e-mail   An Outlook Voice Access user places a call to the subscriber access number from a telephone and wants to access voice mail. The voice prompt says, "Welcome. You're connected to Microsoft Exchange. To access your mailbox, please enter your extension. To contact someone, press the # key." After the user enters a mailbox extension number, the voice prompt says, "Please enter your PIN and press the # key." After the user enters a PIN, the voice prompt says, "You have 2 new voice mails, 10 new e-mail messages, and your next meeting is at 10:00 A.M. Please say voice mail, e-mail, calendar, personal contacts, directory, or personal options." When the user says "E-mail," Unified Messaging reads the message header and then the name, subject, time, and priority for the messages that are in the subscriber's mailbox.

• Access calendar   An Outlook Voice Access user places a call to the subscriber access number from a telephone and wants to access voice mail. The voice prompt says, "Welcome. You're connected to Microsoft Exchange. To access your mailbox, please enter your extension. To contact someone, press the # key." After the user enters a mailbox extension, the voice prompt says, "Please enter your PIN and press the # key." After the user enters a PIN, the voice prompt says, "You have 2 new voice mails, 10 new e-mail messages, and your next meeting is at 10:00 A.M. Please say voice mail, e-mail, calendar, personal contacts, directory, or personal options." When the user says "Calendar," Unified Messaging says, "Sure, and which day should I open?" The user says, "Today's calendar." Unified Messaging responds by saying, "Opening today's calendar." Unified Messaging reads each of the calendar appointments for that day for the user.

  Note

  If a Unified Messaging server encounters a corrupted calendar item in a user's mailbox, it will fail to read the item, but will return the caller to the Outlook Voice Access main menu and will skip reading any additional meetings that may be scheduled for the rest of the day.

• Access voice mail   An Outlook Voice Access user places a call to the subscriber access number from a telephone and wants to access voice mail. The voice prompt says, "Welcome. You're connected to Microsoft Exchange. To access your mailbox, please enter your extension. To contact someone, press the # key." After the user enters a mailbox extension number, the voice prompt says, "Please enter your PIN and press the # key." After the user enters a PIN, the voice prompt says, "You have 2 new voice mails, 10 new e-mail messages, and your next meeting is at 10:00 A.M. Please say voice mail, e-mail, calendar, personal contacts, directory, or personal options." The user says "Voice mail" and Unified Messaging reads the message header and then the name, subject, time, and priority for the voice messages that are in the user's mailbox.

  Note

  If speech recognition is enabled, users can access their UM-enabled mailbox using speech input. However, subscribers can also use touchtone, also known as dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF), by pressing 0. Speech recognition is not enabled for PIN input.

• Locate an e-mail alias   An Outlook Voice Access user places a call to the subscriber access number from a telephone and wants to locate a person in the directory by spelling the e-mail alias. The voice prompt says, "Welcome. You're connected to Microsoft Exchange. To contact someone, press the # key." The user presses the # key, and then spells the name of the person using DTMF or touchtone inputs.

  Note

  The directory search feature with subscriber access is not speech-enabled. Users will be able to spell the name of the person who they want to contact only using DTMF inputs.

  Important

  In some companies (especially in East Asia), office telephones may not have letters on the keys of the telephone. This makes the spell-the-name feature that uses the DTMF interface almost impossible to use, without a working knowledge of the key mappings. By default, Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging uses the E.161 key mapping. For example, 2=ABC, 3=DEF, 4=GHI, 5=JKL, 6=MNO, 7=PQRS, 8=TUV, 9=WXYZ.
  When inputting a combination of letters and numbers, for example, Mike1092, the numeric digits are mapped to themselves. For an e-mail alias of Mike1092 to be entered correctly, the user must press the numbers 64531092. Also, for characters other than A-Z and 0-9, there won't be a telephone key equivalent. Therefore, these characters shouldn't be entered. For example, the e-mail alias mike.wilson would be entered as 6453945766. Even though there are 11 characters to be input, only 10 digits are entered by the user because the period (.) does not have a digit equivalent.

Return to top