In his blog, “Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging”, GregK discusses some of the differences between Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging and Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging.

Unified Messaging (UM) can perform name lookups based on information derived from who is the calling party and who is the called party. When a missed call notification is sent out it can include the caller’s name based on information it receives from the lookup. Also, when a caller leaves a voice message, for a UM-enabled user, the caller information can be derived based on the existence of the calling party’s name in Active Directory or in the called party’s personal Contacts.

Greg describes the differences between how Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging supports Caller ID Resolution and how Caller ID Resolution is handled in Exchange 2007 UM. He notes that most people would prefer to see Caller ID resolution display the names of the callers as opposed to displaying their phone numbers. Prior to Exchange 2010 UM, Exchange 2007 Caller ID information was displayed based on the following factors:

• Resolve extension against the called person’s dial plan.
• Resolve SIP address against SIP proxy address.
• Resolve against the called person’s personal contacts.
• Resolve E164 number against MsRtcSip-Line.

Greg notes that Exchange 2010 added Active Directory lookup heuristics on multiple attributes, but that those attributes were not indexed and could not be queried by Exchange Unified Messaging. So, to make it easier for suffix searches, Unified Messaging copied the reversed phone number to a Dual Tone Multiple-Frequency (DTMF) map attribute. Dual Tone Multiple-Frequency is commonly known as touchtone.

Additional phone numbers can also be searched which include:

• telephoneNumber, otherTelephone
• homePhone, otherHomePhone
• mobile, otherMobile
• facsimileTelephoneNumber, otherFacsimileTelephoneNumber

This capability makes it easier for users to interact with their system using either DTMF or voice inputs. The configuration, of the Unified Messaging dial plans and auto attendants, determines which method – DTMF or voice inputs – will be used by the users to interact with their system.

If the DTMF interface is used then callers can use the telephone keypad to locate users and navigate the Unified Messaging menu system when they call a subscriber access number configured on a dial plan or when they call a telephone number configured on an auto attendant.

Administrators should be aware that, after upgrading to Exchange Unified Messaging  2010 SP1, the UM Auto Attendant for call transfers may fail for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 dial plans. Because Communications Server can be used for routing phone calls to a phone extension it has sometimes resulted in an error based on the values in the location profile.

Before Exchange UM 2010 SP1, the location profile was sent by Exchange Server to the Communications Server to indicate how to transfer a call to an extension. This information came from the UM dial plan. The location profile was indicated in the Refer-To header in the REFER (the message used to transfer the call to the extension).

REFER sip:alice@server0.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP test.server0.com;branch=z9hG4bK2293940223
To: <sip:alice@test.server0.com>
From: <sip: amit@test.server0.com >;tag=193402342
Call-ID: 898234234@ test.server0.com
CSeq: 123 REFER
Max-Forwards: 70
Refer-To: clark@test.server0.com;phone-context=test.server0.com
Contact: sip:amit@test.server0.com
Content-Length: 0

For transfer of the call to be successful, the UM dial plan must have the exact same information – name – as the Communications Server location profile. But in Exchange UM 2010 SP1, the location profile information is no longer relayed. In the Refer-To header, you will see something similar to the following:

REFER sip:alice@server0.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP test.server0.com;branch=z9hG4bK2293940223
To: <sip:alice@test.server0.com>
From: <sip: amit@test.server0.com >;tag=193402342
Call-ID: 898234234@ test.server0.com
CSeq: 123 REFER
Max-Forwards: 70
Refer-To: clark@test.server0.com;phone-context=user-default
Contact: sip:amit@test.server0.com
Content-Length: 0

The setting “phone-context=user-default” in the Refer-To field indicates that the default location profile should be used by Communications Server. This Exchange UM action is what allows Communications Server to select the best location profile. Unfortunately, it also means that Communications Server must have a default location profile configured to make use of this feature.

As a result, administrators may find that Exchange UM 2010 SP1 dial-by-extension does not work for the Communications Server dial plan. Or, they may encounter a situation where the call transfer – via key mappings in UM Auto Attendant to extensions – does not work. If either of these situations occurs then it usually means that the location profile was not selected. Otherwise, the Communications server would have known how to route the call to an extension using the default location profile. Administrators will not have these issues as long as they are running Exchange UM 2010 SP1 with Communications Server 2007 R2 and the Communications Server has been updated with the latest updates.

With the 64-bit release of Exchange Server many organizations will want to leverage the additional Unified Messaging support for a seamless integration of their telephone and data networks. The result will be greater employee productivity as messaging becomes another communication mechanism of your email systems.

Exchange Server and Unified Messaging

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In his blog, Aaron Tiensivu discusses one of the new features of Exchange Server 2010, that of “Speech to Text”. 

As everyone knows, this is a feature whereby a caller’s voicemail message is left through an answering service and then it is converted into text. In this case, Exchange Server 2010 now provides the capability to send that converted voice mail message into an email message.

In Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft introduced voice mail as part of their new Unified Messaging methodology. Unified Messaging gave the end users the capability to have all their communications, be it voice mail or email, all come into the end users inbox to be managed from one location. Now with Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft extended that capability to include a text transcription of any voice mail message.

This ability to be able to read a text transcription in addition to being able to listen to voice mail can help a user to determine if they have heard the voice mail correctly. This can be very helpful when a caller has left their own phone number or an important address and time for a meeting on their voice mail message. I know that there are many times I have had to listen to a voice mail message a couple time straining my ears to verify that I have heard some important unintelligible detail of the message. Sometimes it has been frustrating to the point that I need to contact the caller just to verify the initial communication.

Aaron mentions that he utilizes Office Communications Server and uses it as his primary number. All in all, Aaron has three phone numbers – his OCS phone number, his local office phone number and his work cell phone number. Each of those three numbers is associated with their own voice mailbox that must be managed.

One of the considerations left out by Aaron regarding the speech to text transcription feature is that of how much processor utilization is needed. When deploying the speech to text transcription service within your company administrators should first try to determine how much processor capacity could potentially be consumed for this capability.

As a first cut, rough draft guesstimate, an administrator can start off by identifying what variables should be used to guesstimate total processor needs.  Here are some of the most likely variables for the computation:

1. Total number of users.
2. Average number of hours of utilization.
3. Average number of voice mails per utilization period.
4. Average time duration of each voice mail message.

For example, here are some numbers for a possible calculation:

U = 2000 users
H = 10 hours of utilization
V = 10 voice mails (assume each user gets 10 calls per 10-hour day)
T = 1 minute of voice mail duration

Using these numbers we can guesstimate how many minutes of voice mail per day will need to be transcribed as follows:

Total transcription minutes = U x H x V x T

So we end up with the following calculation:

Total transcription minutes (TTM) = 2000 x 10 x 10 x 1 (minute)
TTM = 20000 x 10
TTM = 200000 minutes of voice mail needing transcription per day
TTM = 200000 divide by 60 minutes
TTM = 3333 hours

That’s a lot of hours, far too many than are available in one day. Luckily it does not take that long to transcribe one minute of voice mail. If we assume it takes one second of clock time to transcribe 1000 minutes of voice mail then our calculation becomes:

Total clock seconds needed for transcription = 200000 divide by 1000
Total Clock Seconds = 200 seconds

Further evaluation leads to:
Total Clock Hours = 200 divide by 60 seconds
Total Clock Hours = 3.33 hours

What all these calculations are intended to do is to help administrators size their systems accordingly. If the email servers have been deployed in virtual environments then these calculations can help to estimate the number of and granularity of virtual processors. They can also be used to guesstimate how much memory should be allocated for speech to text transcription by performing similar calculations for memory usage. Of course there are other factors to consider such as the speed of the processors.

And if we circle back to Aaron Tiensivu’s blog post, specifically his mention of using three mailboxes for three phone numbers then you could add in another factor representing average number of phone number mailboxes per user.

In summary, I agree with Aaron that the speech to text feature can be very beneficial to end users. I would add that with each new feature introduced into a company’s data center it must be weighed against the costs – both tangible and intangible – of each new capability.

Using the Email Transcription Service in Exchange Server 2007

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Some Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 roles require Internet Information Services (IIS) to function.   On these servers Exchange will install a series of IIS virtual directories.  In this post I will describe the Exchange Server virtual directories and their purpose.

/owa – This is the directory for OWA (Outlook Web Access on Exchange 2007, and now called Outlook Web App on Exchange 2010), which is the web browser version of Outlook that is usually accessed by remote workers.  The /owa directory is for access to Exchange 2007 or 2010 mailboxes.

/Public – This is the directory used by OWA users when accessing any Public Folders in the organization.

/Exchweb – This directory is used for OWA access for Exchange 2003 or 2000 users but is not usually accessed directly by the end user.  The OWA session will automatically refer the connect to this virtual directory when necessary.

/Exchange – This directory is again used for OWA access.  When an Exchange 2003 or 2000 mailbox user access the /Exchange virtual directory they are proxied to their mailbox.  For Exchange 2007 or 2010 mailbox users they are redirected to the /owa directory for their mailbox access.

This is useful during the transition from legacy Exchange versions to 2007 or 2010, because users can continue to connect to the /Exchange directory and the result will always be that they connect to their mailbox, as long as the server does not run the Mailbox Server role.  In other words, the /Exchange directory only works for legacy mailbox users if the server is a dedicated Client Access Server (though it can also contain the Hub Transport Server role without a problem)./Exadmin – this directory is for administrative purposes only.  Normal users cannot access this directory.

/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync – this directory is for ActiveSync clients to connect to mailboxes.  These are typically mobile phones or smart phones that have an ActiveSync-compatible email application.

/OAB – this directory publishes the Offline Address Book for clients running Outlook 2007 and above.  Earlier versions of Outlook download the OAB from Public Folders instead.

/Autodiscover – this directory publishes Autodiscover information.  Clients running Outlook 2007 and above, and some ActiveSync clients, can query Autodiscover for a user’s mailbox configuration and automatically set up the mail profile without the end user needing to enter details such as server names.

/EWS – this directory publishes Exchange Web Services, a new programming API that makes Exchange data available to third party applications.

/Rpc and /RpcWithCert – these directories are for Outlook Anywhere, which was formerly known as RPC-over-HTTPS.  As the name suggests, this allowed Outlook clients to make an RPC connection to the Exchange server over an SSL encrypted tunnel from anywhere, making it possible for staff on the road to continue using Outlook without interruption.

/UnifiedMessaging – this directory allows access to Unified Messaging Web Services.  Unified Messaging is Exchange Server’s telephony integration, with features such as voicemail, auto attendants, and Outlook Voice Access.  This virtual directory allows the integration of Outlook and OWA with Unified Messaging for features such as voice mailbox PIN resets and playing voicemail messages within OWA.

/PowerShell – this directory, appearing only in Exchange 2010, allows remote management sessions from the Exchange Management Shell.

/ecp – this directory, again new to Exchange 2010, publishes a self-service control panel for administrators and users.  A broad range of administrative tasks can be delegated to power users and made accessible through the Exchange Control Panel, such as creating new distribution groups and managing SMTP addresses for mailbox users.  Normal users can also access self-service options such as updating their personal information.

Overview of Exchange Server Virtual Directories

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