Scalix unified messaging with Mitel or other phone vendors

[Robert.E.Hill]

Has anyone used scalix for a unified messaging solution? We are an independant University looking at upgrading our phone system with possible VOIP and one of the key features is intergration with a Lotus, Novell, or MS Exchange server. We have recently installed Scalix 10 and are happy with it however or phone vendors don't seem to know about it. Please let me know of any difficulties you may had implementing, or if you are planning to use it in such a system.

Thanks,
Robert

[Trevor Benson]

It depends on the VoIP system and the type of integration you are looking for. Many VoIP systems allow for voicemail to email gateway to send your voicemail to you. Any should be able to provide this service. If you mean deleting some voicemail in your mailbox from inside Scalix, and then dialing in and finding the VM box with the changes you made I doubt this is there.

I think in Exchange 2k/2k3 its using the WebDAV functionality. Current experience with the MS WebDAV implementation and various opensource clients publishing to it has not gone well, although it could be the client implementation of WebDAV.

I could see a hack for VoIP/Asterisk allowing it to submit voicemail's to a container in a mailbox, and the wav audio similar to an attachement. Although it would take someone with more familiarity with Asterisk VM scripts/system (and time) to implement.

[kanderson]

Depending on how integrated you want, this is no problem at all.

For the most part, all the vendors are looking for is an SMTP where thy can send their voicemail as a wav for retreival through a web email client. This is no problem.

We have Scalix working with an NEC PBX, as well as with Asterisk@home. Both worked out of the box, and with absolutely no problems.

Kev.

[Trevor Benson]

Right thats what I meant with the voicemail to email gateway, Trixbox (new release of Asterisk@Home) just has you put in an email address, been using it for awhile. Which i mentioned just about ANY VoIP system should be able to provide this service. Usefull (i love mine) but not quite 'integrated'.

What I meant about integration between the voicemail system and Scalix is a single instance. I am sure there are a few ways to do it, it just seemed logical to attempt to store the voicemail content (ie. envelope headers for voicemail like the date and time stamps, audio, Caller Id Information) in someones mailstore, then the user can review voicemail in folder in their personal mailbox. And if they dial in from the outside tomorrow, the voicemail system replicates all those changes. Deleted ones are gone, moved ones are in the appropriate voicemail folders, and any changes are represented between the Dialin Voicemail System and the Scalix Voicemail interface.

I think it would take someone with a decent knowledge of the ldap schema of Scalix (to implement cleanly). I suppose the asterisk side wouldnt be all that tough to do, I could probably write the script as long as the VM side is as scriptable as the dial plan and extensions. Although that leaves is someone who knows the ldap schema. I am sure i could just start hacking the ldap database on a lab scalix server, but would prefer working with someone who is more intimate with the om/scalix schema.

[kentrak]

Seems easier actually if you could define a new folder store type (can you?) and could define actions to happen when messages are copied, moved, deleted, flagged as read, unread, etc. If you could defined these actions to call external hooks, it would probably be easy to integrate with any system that supported outside manipulation.

This would also open folder types to be used to integrate with online BBS systems, and a myriad of other external messaging systems.

Note, what I mentioned above was a system that actually had message items stored in the mail store, and performed external actions whenever the item status changed. It's also feasible (IMO) to implement this in such a way that the folder gets it's listing externally, and actually stores no data in the message store, although this could cause other problems.