How to Test Unified messaging voice mail feature with Exchange UM Test Phone Author: Padman De Silva [email protected] Version 1.0 Even though the Unified messaging feature is available with exchange 2007 most of us don’t have luxury to test this in our test labs, mainly due to the cost of PABX and the voice gateways, for this Microsoft has give us a Test Phone (soft), but most of us don’t know about it. Here am taking you through a step by step process in order to setup your Exchange 2007 server with UM and test UM functions using Test phone given by Microsoft. Step 1. You need to install Exchange 2007 with Unified messaging role, (I’m not going to tell you how you install Exchange 2007, because it is out of scope from this article) I’m assuming that your Exchange 2007 is running with Unified messaging server role here. Step 2. Creating Dial Plan. Open your Exchange Management console. Click on  Organization configuration  Unified messaging; in the detail pan click on UM dial plans Tab, from Action pan click on New UM dial plan. Type the name you want to represent this dial Pan, and the number of digits you’re going to use in your internal phone extensions. Then Click NEXT  FINISH Step 3. Then you have to configure your IP Gateway, usually this will be your PBX (if its supports IP and SIP over TCP-most of the soft and hard PBX and voice gateways support only SIP over UDP) In this case this is going to be your workstation running Exchange UM Test Phone. Now click on UM IP Gateways Tab then from the Action pane click on New UM IP Gateway. In the name box you can type any name you want to represent this IP gateway. In the IP address box you have to give your Voice gateway IP, if it’s a IP enable PBX you can give that IP, for this Test we have to give the IP of our workstation running Exchange UM Test Phone. If your IP gateway support FQDN , then you can give the FQDN name instead of the IP, In the Dial plan you have click on Brows and select the Dial plan we created now. Then Click New and FINISH. Step 4 Now we have to create the hunt group for your Exchange UM. For that click on the IP gateway you created just now and click the right mouse button. From the context menu select New UM Hunt group. In the Name Box type any name you wish to give for this Hunt Group. Then Select the Dial plan you created earlier, and then type the hunt number you want to associate with your Exchange UM, in the real life scenario this will be your hunting number to access your exchange server from outside. In this test we will use “555” as our hunting number. Step 5. By default there will be a UM mailbox policy created when you start creating Dial plan and so on. You can modify these settings according to your needs. From the General tab you can define the name of the policy and Maximum greeting duration in minutes, this will allow you to restrict Users putting very lengthy greetings on their mailboxes. And you can select or deselect miss call alerts going to user’s mailbox. In Message Test Tab you can define, all the custom Text message you want to sent out on various UM events. In PIN policy tab you can define the length of the PIN number to access users mailbox, and the PIN number lifetime (duration of the PIN) and various other options relate to the PIN. Dialing restrictions am covering in one of my other article. Now let’s talk about UM Dial plan properties you can change, to access properties of your dial plan , simply double click on the dial plan you created. In this you can define NDR reports been sent to users or not and allowing users to receive Fax. In Subscriber access Tab you can change the default voice greeting played when you access your mailbox, In Dial codes tab you can define all the dial out code in your exchange setup, Ex: to dial outside users have to press “9” before the number. Am not going to talk about Dialing rules and Auto attendant, which is out of scope from this article. Step 6. Now we are ready with Global UM configuration, now we have to associate these configuration with our UM Server. For that you have to click on Server configuration and the click on the UM server you have Installed UM function, in our case its only one server, and then double click on the selected server. Then go to UM Settings Tab and click Add in Associated Dial plans section, then select the dial plan you created before. Then click OK. Now we have Dial plan we created, associated with our UM Server. Step 7. Now we are ready with our UM setup; now we have to enable users with UM function. Click on the Recipient configuration  Mailbox then the desired user whom you want to give UM access, then click right mouse and from the context menu select Enable Unified messaging. Select the UM Policy you created, and then enter the users Extension number, and his PIN number. Or you can select use can set his PIN when he access the mailbox for the 1st time. Then select Enable. Now we are done with UM server configuration and mailbox setup. Let’s go to our workstation running Exchange UM test phone and test our UM function. How do I get this Exchange UM Test Phone ??? It’s in the Exchange installation CD, just extract the installation files on to your workstation hard drive. And then brows to the following location “File extracted drive”:\”File Extracted folder”\setup\serverroles\common\exchangeumtestphone.exe Note: Make sure you are running .Net Frame work 2.0 or heir in order to use this application, I have tried this with vista but it appears not working on Vista, then I used windows XP with SP 2 and .net frame work 2.0, and it works fine !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, so be careful with that. Step 8. Run “exchangeumtestphone.exe” Now you will see an cool soft phone like this. Then click on Tools  Setup In Server Address type the IP address of your Exchange Server running UM, the for the Pilot Identifier type the Hunt number we gave in our Hunt group setup, in this case it will be “555”. Then click OK. Now we are ready to test our UM, Oops !!!!! make sure you have Speakers and a Mick to experience the NEW Exchange UM. Ok guys now all set to test our UM, go ahead and hit the Make a call button in your Test phone, now you should see “Successfully established call to phone 555 on server “your server IP””, and then listen to the Exchange Voice and proceed with the instruction it gives. HAPPY UNIFIED MESSAGING GUYS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!