RedSack Blogger

we have the following setup..
Phones are on 10.1.1.1-255 range
UC500 has an access on 192.168.10.0-255
Our network is on 192.168.0.0-255

We do not use the PC port on the phone to carry data as there are two problems with this, one is we have very heavy CAD users with multiple files open and the data transfer on a normal network is heavy let alone through a voice carrying system as well, the second is I don't really want to change all of our switches and routers over to Cisco boxes.

I wanted to allow our phone users who requested it to have their phones messages converted to email, so I had to find a way in to the Cisco box and pull the phone messages, to in turn push them to each users Outlook inbox.

Some of you I am sure will say why not just open the firewall on the Cisco box and link in that way with one network lead from the box to your network, well the reason I did not go down this route was I did not feel comfortable tampering with all the Access-list and other things ( tried it and lost the phones for 5 minutes, and that's not good) so this is the way I did it, and it gives I think more control over what is happening, It also saves you running around each users PC to set it up, and for IT managers that great.

End game
Pull Voice messages from Cisco box and push them to email users, Simply really.

As usual when I post here I will try and be as explicit as possible.

Now on to the configuration

Select Add New Account

Select the 'IMAP' option, click 'Next'

For the User you are setting this account up for in our case here is called 'Somebody' but when you setup this It is best to use their full name, it will make it easer in the long run to identify them later.

2) the email address on your primary email server you are going to use to send all phone massages through.

3) the Imap server address of your Cisco box

4) The server address of your primary Email server

5) User name, the users login name in the phone system, you can find this in the CME

or CLI

6) the users login password, you will have to ask them for this

Now click 'More Settings'

Name this 'Somebody' box with the users full name

I use peakphone@ourdomain.com so users know where it has come from and our own domain is trusted in their email packages.

Click 'OK' and finish the account setup.

Now you need to create a message rule that triggers when new mail arrives in the Imap folder you have just setup, this rule will then push the voice mail through to the end users email account.

Select 'Rules and Alerts' from the 'Tools' menu

Create a New rule
Make sure you have your user (Somebody) selected in the 'Apply changes to this folder' because you want to make the rule run here and nowhere else.

Click the next button to setup what we are going to do when an email arrives into this account

Select 'Forward it to people or distribution list'
click this option in the bottom window and find the users email account you wish to send the voice mail to.

NOW - when you have sent the email what do you want to do with the local copy?

If you select 'delete it' as above the voice mail will disappear from the phone, i.e. the red hand-set light will not be lit, how ever there will be a message on the phone saying 'Missed x calls'

if you do not delete it, the phone hand-set will be lit and the message can be obtained from the phone.

it's up to you on this one.

The last thing you need to do is again name the rule with the users full name.

And that's it, you will need to do this for each voice mail account that needs it, we have 32 phones and really only 12 users need this feature, if you are in a big company with many users then maybe this is not the way.

This way you have full control on one local PC, no walking around the site setting up machines to receive Voice message emails