A Blogger’s Unified Communications Story - Unified Messaging
Mitch a a blogger at MitchGarvis.com writes a blog post talking about how his hosting provider recently enabled Unified Communications. Mitch tells his story about his experience.
Mitch goes on to say.. Microsoft has been talking about Unified Messaging for a couple of years now, and I have been interested in it since the outset but because I do not always have the infrastructure (or the time) to do a lot of the things I would like to do, this (among myriad others) has fallen by the wayside.
My own mail domain is actually managed by an online hosting provider that has recently enabled Unified Communications… and the other day they sent me an e-mail telling me that I could now set up my voice mail to forward to their server.
The cool features I got to play with last night:
- Voice Mail from my Inbox: I left myself a voice mail (at 1:30am there aren’t too many other people to talk to… even the puppies were asleep). Within seconds I received an e-mail not only telling me I had a voice message… but it allowed me to play it right from my Inbox.
- Listen to my e-mail: I called in an after entering my secure code I was able to not only listen to my voice mail, but could navigate my Inbox and have the pleasant female voice read my e-mails to me. I could then reply and go on to the next one. Really cool!
- Hear my calendar: I saw a video last year that was a take-off of The Devil Wears Prada (a movie I have not seen but I am assured the characters are spot on). In it the Administrative Assistant uses all sorts of features that look like magic, including talking to her Calendar and telling it that she will bee ten minutes late for a meeting (the pleasant female voice then assures her that ’she’ would notify all meeting attendees). I always thought it was cool, but did not realize how easy it was to do… I did not actually reschedule meetings, but I did get to hear how busy my day would be today.
- All the normal Voice Mail options…: Of course I was able to change my pin, record my name, change my OGM (I opted to use the pleasant female voice rather than my own). These are all features we expect to be able to do with voice mail… but with Exchange?
WordPress
One of the complaints Microsoft has received about its UM offering is the lack of a message waiting indication and that a third-party integration is needed for this. I wonder what Mitch’s experience was with MWI, or if it was even an issue. Microsoft contends that most people don’t need the message waiting indication anymore, which is why they didn’t bother with it. I wonder how end users really feel about this…
on June 27, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
I am much happier receiving an e-mail on my smartphone telling me I have a voice mail than any MWI on a phone… especially since when I am in Canada (70% of the time) I do not want to carry my US cell phone, and will receive the e-mail on my Canadian smartphone. Having said that if I were sitting in an office I always have my Outlook open on my desktop, and would see the e-mail almost instantly.
on June 27, 2008 @ 9:19 pm
MWI is the same as when Cisco bring out a phone that has 150 phone lines.. We going back in time to 60’s and 70’s.
People should be looking at new way so of work.
on June 28, 2008 @ 10:35 am