Weird, random messages from Unity. Unity calling and recording itself?

[Lando.Griffin]

A site is reporting a strange problem. Apparently, their users occasionally receive odd messages in their mailboxes. Most of the time, the messages are snippets of Unity Conversation prompts (press 1 to listen to your messages, press 2 to save the message...). Sometimes the messages are blank.

I listened to an example message they sent me. The recording begins in the middle of an actual message that was left for the user, and then the rest of the recording is Unity prompting for input until the message ends. The portion of the recording that is an actual message is from a message that was received and saved 5 days prior and is still in their mailbox. The user says they didn't do anything to create this second, messed up message—it just randomly appeared (but they are a higher up, and I suspect they are just saying that to save face). When I look at call logs for the time when this messed up message was created, it shows this extension in CUCM dialing Unity, and then Unity placing a call back to the extension in CUCM (which then would get routed back to Unity if no one picks up). Unity seems to be calling itself and recording itself. 

I'm not expecting anyone to solve this particular issue over a forum, but can someone point me in the right direction to find a solution? I don't know where to begin looking. The user does not have any Notification Devices setup in Unity, and at first blush I'm not seeing anything wrong with the Routing Rules in Unity. We're using Unity Connection 12.5. Thanks

[Scott Leport]

Hi,

My first thought would have been the routing rules, but you've said they appear to be ok.

I would check the affected extensions transfer rules in Unity (Users -> User Account -> Transfer Rules). It doesn't make sense that CUC would redirect the call back to CUCM unless it was configured to do so.

[Lando.Griffin]

Thanks for replying, Scott.

We do have a Transfer Rule set for the user.

Transfer Action= Transfer calls to: Extension or URI.

Transfer Type=Release to Switch.

However, this is an expected setup. We want things set so that if an outside caller is listening to the Unity Call Handler, they can try to transfer to reach the person at their phone extension before getting passed off to voicemail to leave a message.

[Maren Mahoney]

I don't know off the top of my head what might be causing this, but let's gather information. So....

What are the prompts that are recorded? Are they prompts for login or prompts for message delivery? ("Please enter your PIN" versus "If you would like to send your message now...." sorts of prompts?)

Are the affected users Single Number Reach users?

Also, what is the "After Message Action" setting for the affected users?

Maren

[Lando.Griffin]

Thanks for replying, Maren.

What they hear is part of a saved message, and then the "play message" prompts—so they hear "To save it, press 1. To delete, 2. To forward, 3. etc." And it just repeats over and over a few times as it waits for an input.

The affected users are not SNR users.

The After Message Action is set to the "Goodbye" Call Handler.

[Maren Mahoney · Accepted solution]

Sorry for the delayed response. Ummm....ick. I don't know. If you have TAC support I think it's time to call them. We'd have to dig around in the Conversation Manager trace file to see what is going on.

Another thought: On the ciscounitytools.com website there is a Port Status Monitor that can tell you on a call-by-call, port-by-port basis exactly what Unity Connection is doing. It would require you to happen to catch one of these calls in progress, but you may also be able to log the output for later analysis. (I've never tried that so I don't know if it's possible with this tool.)

Port Status Remote Monitor for Connection (rPSM) 

Maren

[Scott Leport]

Hi Maren,

That's a good shout on the Port Status Remote Monitor. I didn't know about that one. Is that similar to the Port Status Monitor you can run in RTMT or completely different?

Scott

[Maren Mahoney]

Scott,

It's a different and far more verbose monitor. It will display, step-by-step, what action is happening including keypresses, exactly what greeting is played, what UConn is considering. If you look at the Tool Help via the link above it will show you what the tool looks like along with step-by-step instructions.

Maren

[Adam Pawlowski]

Also worth checking notification devices/rules. It shouldn't result in the message being played back as far as I know, but we have had users get into the PCA and add their station to the "Work Phone" notification devices. Back in Unity days at least one filled their mailbox with notifications as the system kept calling itself.

[Lando.Griffin]

Thanks, everyone, for your help. I couldn't find the source of the problem, however, I now have the Port Status Remote Monitor tool running and exporting the data to a log file, so if the problem happens again I'll hopefully be able to see what happened.