Unified MSG & Mobility

Essentially, what this means is that you go to the same spot, usually Outlook, Lotus Notes, or Groupwise, to pick up all of your e-mail, fax, and voice-mail messages.

There are essentially two types of Unified Messaging: Integrated, and non-integrated.

If the system is integrated, when you listen to the message through your Outlook client, it automatically deletes the message from your voice mail, and when you delete the message from your voice mail, it deletes the message automatically from your Outlook inbox.

If the system is non-integrated, the message store of voice mail and message store of Outlook are not synchronized so that when you delete the message from Outlook, it does not delete it from the voicemail box, and similarly, if you delete the message from your voicemail box, it does not delete it from your Outlook.

Another feature frequently found in Unified Messaging is faxing. There are two ways of having your faxes sent to your desktop. Some companies have one DID (telephone number) for both their voice and fax calls. The challenge with this method is that if the sending side dials the fax number and does not send their sending fax tone, the DID will answer the call and assume it is a voice call. It is more advisable to have one DID for voice and a separate DID for fax. If the fax comes into a DID, the system will convert the fax to a *.pdf or *.tif file format and deposit the fax into the user's fax inbox.