Unity Connection mailbox with same extension

[huntlee]

Dear NetPro gurus,

My customer is using Unity Connection 8.0 with CUCM 8.0 and all customer phone has 3 digit extensions.

e.g. 1XX
       2XX

All of these phones at HK offices are in HK-Internal-PT.

The original design is that this Unity Connection 8.0 server will ONLY be used by their Hong Kong office.  And the Unity Connection server is integrated to a LDAP server at HK.  However, the customer now has an extra office (Beijing) which happens that their internal extension is also 1XX and they want to utilize the same Unity Connection server.

With CUCM, I can help the customer to put all these Beijing phones into a different partition (e.g. BJ-Internal-PT).  And I can give it a site code so when they need to call each other, they can have the following site code:-

*01 - for Hong Kong
*02 - for Beijing

This is all good and done for on call routing side for IP Phone calls.  However, for the Unity Connection side, how can i make it so if the Hong Kong has a user with extension 100, together with another user with extension 100, how can they both have their own mailbox??

I have spent a lot of time thinking over this but I couldn't get anywhere.  Would be greatly appreciated if you could shed some light on this.

Cheers,
Hunt

[Clifford McGlamry]

Your options depend on the archetecture.

If the customer has two separate call processing systems (Callmanager in one site, and another callmanager or CME in the second), you can use partitions and Call Search Spaces within Unity Connection itself.

I get the feeling that you are sharing the CallManager between both sites.  If this is the case, you will need to at least start formulating some sort of global dial plan for your company.

Since office A is already hooked up, the easiest thing to do is to put some number (maybe a 2) in front of all extension numbers to build the mailboxes for office B.  You'd need to adjust the mask in the voicemail profile to append this, but then it would work fairly seemlessly.  The problem will come in if you are also running an auto attendant on there since it won't know the three digit extensions for Office B.

Second option, add a digit to both offices.  Put a 1 in front of all extensions for Office A and a 2 in front of all extensions for Office B.  Give customers the 4 digit extension numbers.  You don't have to change the internal extensions as they can just use the mask in the voicemail profile (set as 1XXX or 2XXX) to handle integration between the two systems.

Third option, go to 4 digit dialing enterprise wide, or re assign the 3 digit extensions in the offices so they don't overlap, and push this through both CallManager and Unity Connection.

Option 3 is the best option from an engineering viewpoint and will give you the best long term results (ease of management, scalability, etc.).

Cliff

[huntlee]

Hi Cliff & Rob,

Yes, both offices are sharing the same CallManager and now sharing the same Unity Connection.  Thanks so much for your explanations.

Can you guys please explain a bit more on the second option??

By setting the VM profile to be 1xxx for 1st office and another VM profile to be 2xxx for 2nd office, but without changing the real extensions on the IP phones on both offices, how can this solve the problem??

I'm sorry as I don't get much chances to play with Unity Connection much so would really appreciated if you guys could elaborate a bit more on how this settings works.

No auto-attendants are needed on either of the offices.

Thanks so much for your help in advance.

Regards,

Hunt

[Clifford McGlamry]

If you want to use Option 2, go into CallManager, and in the voicemail section, you will see a choice that says something like Voicemail Profile.  Verbage may vary based on the version.

In the profile, you have 3 settings.  The name of the profile, the Pilot number associated with the profile, and the mask.  The mask setting works exactly like an external phone number mask.  So if you have the mask in the profile set to 1XXX, and extension 300 hits the voicemail button, they will be seen as 1300 when they land over in Unity Connection. 

You use this same trick to do direct forward to voicemail.  Create a cti route point with the DN number *XXXX  (assuming 4 digit extensions).  Hard forward it to voicemail, but you set the profile to a mask of XXXX.  When someone dials *1234, they will hit the *XXXX CTIRP, be forwarded to VM, and the profile will strip it down to 1234 (removing the leading character, which in this case is a *).  You can use this to direct transfer to VM without ringing a phone, or to direct dial a specific mailbox.

Cliff

[jleon22]

+5 to you Cliff. Those are some great suggestions you listed.

I mentioned yet another suggestion as it would minimize user impact. As with all the internal digit manipuation, education and communication with the users would be essential as their mailbox number would have this "prefixed" extension and it won't be their normal extension. This would impact things like when they get prompted to enter and log into the mailbox, callerID in voicemail notification, etc and also as you mentioned with auto attendants.

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Hunt,

I really agree with Cliff's assessment here! (+5"C")

Nip this in the bud if you can. Numberplan overlap will cause you nothing

but grief. Plus a 3-digit plan doesn't allow for very much growth. Users

can accept a new number if it's easy to remember, so if you just add a

common number at each site as the leading number in the 4-digit plan

people can get used to this quite quickly

Cheers!

Rob

[jleon22]

Another options is that starting in Unity Connection 7.x, it supports internal partitions and calling search spaces simliar to CUCM. This wil help alleviate overlapping extensions/mailbox in Unity. Take a look at this document:

https://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/7x/release/notes/701cucrn.html#wp243161

Hope this helps!

[Clifford McGlamry]

I've done this before.  It works well if there are separate CallManagers involved.  It would also work if you divided the ports up and built multiple integrations (Never tried this).

Without some sort of isolation at the entry to Unity Connection, Partitions and CSS within Unity Connection isn't going to help.

[huntlee]

Dear Cliff,

Thanks so much for your detailed explanation.

One final question, say if i mask the VM profile to 1XXX in CUCM for 1st office, does this means that I would need to change all the existing mailbox extensions to 1XXX e.g. 1100 for the users?? And change all the mailbox extension for the new offices to 2XXX in Unity Connection??

If so, how can i change the extension numbers since they seems to all 'grey out' as my Unity Connection server is integrated with the customer LDAP server. (i.e. as per the screen attachment on the original 1st post).

Thanks so much for your help in advance.

Cheers,

Hunt

[Clifford McGlamry]

That's the beauty of this solution.  You don't have to change anything else but the mask in CallManager.  The Unity Connection voicemail box number (and any associated alternate extensions) change and have the additional digit on the front, but it's added by the mask on the voicemail profile.

If you use this method, you will also need to adjust the transfer number in the transfer handlers of each voicemail box to REMOVE the leading digit, or add a translation pattern within CallManager to convert 1XXX to XXX for the system calling out.  You should also test MWI, as that may be problematic.   Once you've tested the whole thing, at that point you could roll it out if it meets your needs.

I still think going to a non overlapping 4 digit dial plan is a better option, but as outlined, you can do it this way.  It does NOT scale well though when you start adding more sites.

Cliff

[huntlee]

Dear Cliff,

Sorry but I'm still a little confused.

Say if my existing user from office 1 has a mailbox extension of 120.  If my new office also has an user with extension 120.

So now, what do I need to do on Unity Connection to have this 2nd mailbox?

Since the 1st mailbox already has the extension of 120.  For this new user, Unity Connection won't allow me to create a second mailbox with extension of 120.  So what do I need to do??

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but I'm very new to this *masking* of VM profile and would greatly appreciated your help.

Cheers,

Hunt

[vinojesh1994]

Nothing to be worried. To be clear, you have created the VM box for the extensions 100-500 for Hongkong office. You can't create the VM boxes again for the same extension 100 -500 for the new office(Bejing). Obviously, unity won't allow you to do this. Here is the scoop to solve this, create a Voice Mail profile for Hongkong office(HKG-VM-Profile) and leave the Voice Mail Box Mask to be blank. If it is blank, the CUCM will take the user's extension as it is and won't modify anything while sending it to Unity. Then create the VM box for the extensions1100-1500 in unity for Bejing users. Now create a Voice Mail profile for Bejing office(BEJ-VM-Profile) and configure the Voice Mail Box Mask to be 1XXX. Whenever the users in Bejing hitting the VM box, CUCM will add 1 infront of their ext before sending it to the unity. For example, the user who has got 100 ext in Bejing is hitting the VM button, the extension 1100 will be sent to unity and will hit the VM box of 1100 as we have already configured VM box for 1100, this is because of our friend Voice Mail Box Mask.

Hope you will be getting clear picture..... Let me know if you are still having confusion on this.

[Clifford McGlamry]

Maybe a call flow will make it clearer:

Ext 120 office 1 RNA ==>  Voicemail Profile 1XXX  ==>   Unity Connection receives RNA transfer from 1120

Ext 120 office 2 RNA ==>  Voicemail Profile 2XXX  ==>   Unity Connection receives RNA transfer from 2120

Understand?

Cliff

[huntlee]

Dear Cliff,

So on Unity Connection, I would need to create 2 mailboxes prior.  1st one is 1120 and 2nd one is 2120.

Then with the VM Profile mask on CUCM, the call flow would be:-

Ext 120 office 1 RNA ==>  Voicemail Profile 1XXX  ==>   Unity Connection receives RNA transfer from 1120 ==>  Mailbox with extension 1120

Ext 120 office 2 RNA ==>  Voicemail Profile 2XXX  ==>   Unity Connection receives RNA transfer from 2120 ==>  Mailbox with extension 1120

Am I correct?

Cheers,

Hunt

[Clifford McGlamry · Accepted solution]

Correct.

Remember as previously posted above, this will BREAK MWI if you don't do some additional work around this.  It's going to attempt to set MWI on 1120, and you don't have an extension 1120.  Specifics on fixing this can involve reconfiguration in Unity/Unity Connection (details vary by version), translation patterns in CallManager, etc.  It's not necessarily an easy thing to maintain and troubleshoot, so do some testing to work it all out before you roll it out.

Going to a non overlapping dial plan is still the best option.

Cliff