Advice on moving to Office 365 with Unity Connection 8.6.2

[eamonconnolly10]

We have a customer who has been using Microsoft Exchange in their DC but now are moving to the free version off Office 365 in the cloud,  I have to get unity connection 8.6.2 to send the customer staff to their office 365 voicemail.  From what I have read the free version of Office 365 can not do any of the more advanced feature of Unified Messaging so I am really just looking advise on the best way forward.  Do I setup a unified Messaging service and will that just delivery the email to the users inbox or can I just setup a smart host (smtp relay) to deliver the email.  What I am asking is what is the best way forward?  Any advise on this would be gratefully received.

P.S.  If a smtp relay is the best way forward, is this something that can be setup in Office 365 (free version)

[Anirudh Mavilakandy]

I'm not sure what the free version can or cannot do. I believe you should be able to use Unity Connection Unified Messaging. I believe the documentation you read was about Microsoft Unified Messaging which is a separate feature. Unity Connection used EWS to communicate and sync with exchange for Unified Messaging and this should be possible. I don't think they will restrict this for the free version. They best way to find out would be to test this out.

[eamonconnolly10]

Thanks for the reply Anirudh, more reading just seems to raise more questions, would does anyone know if it is possible to configure Unity Connection 8.6.2 to just use a SMTP relay (Smart Host) to send on a voicemail message to an destination email address without the use of a Unified Messaging service.  In my case it will be an office 365 email address (free version of office 365) which will be hosted in the cloud, I have been reading the Cisco Unity Connection book and can't seem to find this out?

I am trying to figure out the best way to get the voicemail email delivered, I don't need any of the extra feature such as accessing calendars or contacts or text to voice, if I have to use the Unified Messaging service I will go down that road but it seems to need powershell access to the office 365 servers which I am concerned won't be available with the free version of office 365.  This is the link to describe setting it up using a Unified Messaging Service for Office 365 for 8.6.2.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/8x/unified_messaging/guide/85xcucumgx/85xcucumg025.html#pgfId-1298251

Again any guidance on the possible options for getting an email delivered would be gratefully received from Unity connection 8.6.2.

[Anirudh Mavilakandy]

You can definitely use an SMTP relay to send the message to Office 365,

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn554323(v=exchg.150).aspx

To use Unified Messaging,

The power shell is not on Office 365. Its on the local workstation. The commands you run on the power shell is to connect to the exchange servers on the cloud and import the additional commands required give application impersonation rights to the UM Service account. All you need is a local workstation with powershell and access to the internet. Also credentials to the admin account on Office 365.

[eamonconnolly10]

Thanks again Anirudh,

The information you give on the Unified Messaging option is extremely useful so thankyou for that, I have another question regarding the SMTP Relay option, I had seen that article on configuring the SMTP Relay on the Office365 side but what configuration do you setup on the Unity Connection end.   I see where you can configure the SMTP relay but where do you configure the Unity user account to use the SMTP relay to deliver the email message instead of a unified Messaging Service. I have been trying to read up on this but have not been having any luck.  If anyone knows a link to a cisco page on how to do this it would be extremely useful.  Cheers

[Anirudh Mavilakandy]

Go to the User > Edit > Message Actions. For voicemail, select accept and relay from the drop down menu.

To do it for multiple users,

select all the required users from the Users page > At the bottom of the page, you'll find Bulk Edit > Use that option and follow the same steps.

I would still look at Unified Messaging service as the first option before going with SMTP relay. Try that out. Its a better feature and synchronizes message status. If you face issues, you can always post back here or open a TAC case.