Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging

Helping individual users who spend most of their time working with Outlook work without needing to check separate systems or mailboxes. By delivering messages, voice mail, and faxes into the same inbox as other messaging types, employees can easily access the information they need immediately instead of constantly switching from one tool to another. This allows them to focus on value adding activities, not on trying to keep up with their communications.

Enabling highly mobile users to stay connected by providing them quick access to all of their communications-- voice mail, e-mail, and faxes-- from Outlook 2007, Outlook Web Access 2007, Exchange ActiveSync®-capable devices and the new Outlook Voice Access (a component of Exchange Server 2007, like Outlook Web Access).

Giving users broad access to calendar, contact and corporate directory data through the telephone, including reading calendar information to users and allowing them to look up and voice dial people both from their own contacts folder and from the corporate directory.

Allowing users to handle their messages and calendar data (including listening to, forwarding, and replying to e-mails and making, updating, or responding to meeting requests) over the telephone. Users can flag messages for follow-up, skip to the next unread, hide or delete conversations, and even find messages from particular users, all using either voice navigation or a standard touch-tone keypad.

Providing Automated Attendant capability to help both internal and external callers find the right person quickly. The Automated Attendant uses information from Active Directory® to route calls both to specific employees and to roles or departments; for example, a caller who asks the attendant for "sales" can be routed to a specific extension, a hunt group (a group of extensions that can be accessed via a single number), or a group voice mailbox.

Outlook Voice Access, which provides telephone access (with both Touch-Tone and speech recognition) to calendar, contact, and e-mail data from any telephone, anywhere in the world. This enables travelers or mobile workers to quickly get or send updates to their calendar, access their contact data, or receive new e-mail messages without requiring a laptop, mobile devices, or Web browser access.

Outlook 2007, which integrates voice mail as a first-class data type. The Outlook 2007 interface allows users to sort, search, and prioritize voice mail messages along with other data items; in addition, users can play voice mail messages on their desk phones, and add notes to voice mail messages so that the contents of the message are indexed along with associated sender and date information. Outlook also provides complete support for user-configurable unified messaging options, including configuring greetings and resetting PINs.

Outlook Web Access 2007, which lets users access their voice mail and fax data from within a browser session. OWA 2007 provides ubiquitous browser-based access to many of the features of Outlook 2007, including the ability to play back voice mail messages on the computer or the telephone and the ability to create and listen to audio notes.

Mobile devices that support connectivity to the Exchange Mailbox, including Exchange ActiveSync, IMAP, and POP3 protocols, which provide wireless and mobile access to inbox data, including voice mail.

Other clients, like Microsoft Entourage® for Mac OS X, which allow users to listen to voice mail messages if the necessary audio codecs are available on the host computer. This provides additional flexibility for users in heterogeneous environments.

Voice mail and fax messages are centralized and stored on the organization's existing e-mail servers, where they can be stored, backed up, and managed alongside other business-critical messaging and collaboration data. By enabling consolidation of voice mail services on Exchange Unified Messaging, Exchange Server 2007 cuts both the initial and ongoing cost of voice mail service by reducing the number of legacy voice mail systems required to provide every employee with voice mail.

The same security and backup policies apply to voice mail, faxes, and conventional Exchange data. Journaling, compliance, and retention support are included and can be applied consistently across all data types.

Exchange administrators can manage the Unified Messaging environment using their existing skills and the familiar Microsoft management interfaces they already use. This further reduces costs by allowing your company to take advantage of skills and capabilities you already have on staff.

Anywhere Access with Exchange Server 2007

Exchange Unified Messaging Integrates Communications

Unified Messaging Features in Exchange Server 2007

White paper: Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging

Exchange Unified Messaging White Paper on Compliance and Data Retention

Working with the Unified Messaging server role

Supported Languages

Telephony Advisor for Exchange Server 2007

Unified Messaging Language Packs

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