Unity/Exchange Integration

[julio]

Our Unity and Exchange servers are integrated. I have this issue. A user already has an exchange account. For example, Jdoe. He did not have a phone and now does. How can I get him a VM account if when I try to create his account it points to the mail server and Unity tries to create a new user ID. If I make his alias match Jdoe, Unity does not let me create it because it says the user already exists.

Is there a work around? i don't want to delete the exchange account. If I create the Unity account as anything else, it will let me just as long as the Exchange alias does not match.

[Ginger Dillon]

Hi -

If you are licensed for and using Unity unified messaging, you can import the user's existing AD account/inbox into Unity. If you are not licensed for unified messaging and want voicemail only, create a second account using a different naming standard like vm-alias, in your example vm-djoe. We have some users that do not want to co-mingle email and voicemail, so we create vm-xxxxx accounts, where xxxxx is the user's 5-digit extension (matches our dial plan).

Ginger

[julio]

Although we do have Unity, when I try to create a user it always defaults to the local Exchange server and there is no option to select the local Unity server.

How do you import the users from AD into Unity? Thank you for your help.

[Ginger Dillon]

Hi -

From the Unity SA, select Subscribers, and then click the + sign to add. Do you get prompted for the "Type of Subscriber"? If you do, there should be two radial buttons, one for New Subscriber (Exchange) and another button that says "Import Existing Exchange User". If you see this as an option, click the radial button for Import and then click Select. Select the domain from where the email-enabled user resides and then select a portion of the alias name, or optionally first or last name. Be sure to leave the * in the field. Click Find. Click on the user's hyperlink to begin the import process. Note: This process will only show you users that are not already Unity-enabled, meaning the ciscoecsbu**** attributes have not been populated.

Hope this helps! Ginger

[littledavewhite]

Hi this is really good info, i am new to unity and also need to import around 500 users into unity from existing ad accounts, using the process you define is this the best way for multiple import of users, somebody mentioned an csv file ? can this be done when you import from ad, i presume the system has to tie the ad id to the unity id ? and help would be great in clarifting this question.

[Ginger Dillon]

Hi Dave -

Unity has a utility called Bulk import just for this process. We use this process for mass deployments and use the Unity SA import for moves/changes. Here is the Unity Admin guide for 5.x that describes the process and the fields for the csv - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/unity/5x/administration/guide/ex/5xcusagepdf.pdf (Chapter 21)

Hint - you can include in the csv a field for setting the Subscriber Template, which will apply a standard set of configuration settings for your users.

Ginger