[Asterisk-Users] Voicemail and MS Exchange Synchronization

[Chris Coulthurst]

Just to put my two cents in..

Whatever the solution for integration with Outlook, I don't think any of the
voicemail should be downloaded via IMAP, POP or any other mail protocol.  I
also think that it should be possible to playback the voicemail in outlook
with a suitable plugin.  So, it would seem that a method be implemented to
allow an authenticated user to check them directly from the .wav-stored
location, or the like, so you could fast forward, rewind, etc.

Where I like the idea of using the telephone for the voicemail at all is, if
you decide to return the call or leave a message for someone else's mailbox,
a TAPI client could initiate the station phone to ring, user picks it up and
the call goes out the door.

ShoreTel does something similar to this with their system; while the
voicemail appears to be downloaded by Outlook, it is merely being displayed
within the Outlook GUI, and is really only retrieved when selected (like
IMAP does, but without the IMAP part).

Seems to me that writing macros, plugins, etc. for Outlook is rather easy
form Visual Basic.  My brother is an extremely capable VB programmer, and I
think if the asterisk community were to adopt a more-or-less standard way of
binding to his Outlook app, we could make something that worked pretty good
and be portable to other programs other than Outlook.

I'm thinking of an API on the asterisk server that would complement the best
features of the manager api, the CLI and direct shell access to voicemail
directories and the like.

Chris Coulthurst
chris at shuksan.com
 

|-----Original Message-----
|From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
|bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Kris Boutilier
|Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 9:40 PM
|To: tim at litwiller.net; Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial
|Discussion
|Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Voicemail and MS Exchange Synchronization
|Importance: Low
|
|> -----Original Message-----
|> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
|> [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of Tim
|> Litwiller
|> Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 9:16 PM
|> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
|> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Voicemail and MS Exchange
|> Synchronization
|>
|>
|> I'm not a programmer - but it sounds to me like you are all
|> making it to hard by transfer the voice files around etc. unless you
|> really have to have the messages stored in the mail server for some
|reason.
|>
|> here is what I would picture
|> a outlook plugin that creates the illusion of several folders
|{clip}
|
|This is good, but just the configuration management process quickly becomes
|unrealistic for a larger office deployment of, say, 250+ clients.
|Similarly, a larger organisaion running Exchange presumably has also
|architected their hardware for it and would get better value from
|consolidating storage in that hardware - consider someone running an
|Exchange Server cluster with a SAN behind it...
|
|Perhaps there really is a need for two tiers of solutions here - the large
|scale Mailserver-as-backend-for-Asterisk concept presented earlier today by
|Craig Guy and then a more generic Asterisk-as-backend-for-mail clients
|using IMAP, some other mail protocol or even a per-mail client custom plug-
|in as you've suggested.
|
|Just my can$0.02
|
|Kris Boutilier
|Information Services Coordinator
|Sunshine Coast Regional District
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