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Unity Connection 8.0 EFT Opportunity

lvernum
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

The Unity Connection team is currently accepting applications for the Cisco Unity Connection® 8.0 Early Field Trial (EFT). The primary features in this release are:

Voicemail to Text-Users can have incoming voicemail messages automatically transcribed to text and then sent to their SMTP or SMS device.

Unity to Unity Connection interoperability -- This feature provides interoperability between a Unity 8.0 Digital Network and a Unity Connection 8.0 Digital Network. The systems will share and synchronize user information. Message routing between networks will be enabled and cross-network logins and transfers will be supported.

Scalability-Unity Connection scalability has been increased to support:

* 20 nodes in a digital network

* 100,000 users and contacts in a single digital network

* 20,000 users on a single Cisco Unity Connection server, or an active-active cluster. (Specific hardware requirements need to be met).

* 500 voice ports on each server in an active-active cluster

Unity migration-Unity Connection 8.0 includes tools to facilitate migrating subscribers from a Unity system to Unity Connection.

Single Point of Administration - This feature improves the ability of an administrator to administer users, contacts, and distribution lists that are homed on remote servers.

Message Aging---Message aging policies can be established per user (currently, this is a global setting).

Supervised Transfer for Alternate Contact Number - The administrator can configure an Alternate Contact number to have a Supervised Transfer. If the Alternate Contact number does not answer or is busy, the caller returns to the subscriber's greeting, where they may be able to try other options or leave a message.

Virtualization-- Unity Connection supports virtualization under VMWare. (Specific hardware requirements need to be met).

Customizable Directory Handlers - Administrators can customize the voice greetings of the Directory Handlers.

Subscriber conversation enhancements - The following features have been added to the subscriber telephone conversation:

* Message recall-Subscribers can recall a message that has not yet been heard by the recipient.

* Drafts folder-Subscribers can access a Drafts Folder to a complete a message that was accidentally or intentionally left incomplete.

* Message Bookmark-Subscribers can resume message playback on the same message they dropped off, the next time they call Unity Connection.

* Alternate Extension List Maintenance - Subscribers can add and delete Alternate Extensions from the conversation.

If you are interested in participating in the trial, or in the Unity Connection EFT program in general, please contact Laura Vernum (lvernum@cisco.com).

Laura Vernum

EFT Coordinator

Cisco Systems

206 256-3012

lvernum@cisco.com

17 Replies 17

keith.adams
Level 1
Level 1

Interested in running it!

Wilson Samuel
Level 7
Level 7

Hi Laura,

I'm really surprised that CSCO is going like MSFT, version after version without any consideration for the customers as such (e.g. MSFT looses market share against the competition esp in the retail sector at least for short while )

I guess, Cisco would put itself a negative impact on customers by just bringing another version change i.e. version 8.0.

For any customer and the support personnel its a daunting task to get trained and have good support on it and time is a major factor on it, esp if the version train changes from 7.x to 8.x (at least there is a psychological / marketing impact)

So, IMHO, if CSCO can keep the version train to 7.x and make this release as 7.5 (I dont see any drastic change at all in the UCX 8.0 as per the description above) it will be greatly encouraging to the customers as well as for the Support personnel folks.

Thanks for going through my view, and if you find this interesting please let me know by rating the post.

Kind Regards

Wilson Samuel

Not quite sure I'm following you - the 8.0 release has no regard for customers? What? Not sure why you're hung up on version numbers - why would the above be better if it was arbitrarily named 7.5 instead of 8.0? I'm confused by the source of your criticism here.

If you're implying that 8.0 is a “light” release I will respectfully and very vigorously disagree with you. The voice to text functionality is huge and has massive implications moving down the road - lots of functionality can be built on that for sure. The interoperability capability is also rather involved and significant and I'm getting my door beat down about virtualization - that's massive and far, far from trivial.

If you have some specific reason why you think 8.0 is ignoring customers I'd love to hear it - I get feedback from many, many customers and that's not my perception at all. I think 8.0 is going to be a watershed release myself, but that's just me.

Hi Jeff,

Nothing personal sir, just trying to throw some criticism and want to hear the reasoning (please pardon me if I'm sounding offensive here) which may otherwise wont be raised here (believe me I'm a huge Cisco Fan :-)

And above all, glad to hear your views upon, (good to know its not a "light" release) the ver 8.0 and thats exactly my point of view, to know and learn more about 8.0 before it hits market including the verticals about it.

My actual surprise is again the version number, whats wrong if CSCO keeps the version number to 7.x itself like it has done for 6500, 7200 and 2600, I'm not asking anything new and I'm sure the 7200 and 7200VXRs have been dramatically improved (NPEs and I/O controllers et al) so is with 6500 (all the Sups and all the Service Modules isnt it?)

I appreciate all the new developments, however whats wrong if we keep the train to 7.x itself than throwing 8.0??

Once again, please dont take it personally, just wondering from outside the perimeter of 170 Tasman Drive!

Regards

Wilson Samuel

PS: This post may sound judgemental/offensive however thats not the intent.

Are you assuming that we're abandonging 7.x users then? That's not the case... in fact a 7.1(3) release is scheduled for October. Bug fixes (ESes) and such will continue to be offered on the 7.x line for some time to come of course (years) - this is very similiar to the hardware platform support policies.

8.0 is a significant jump forward in architecture and DB design and has some aditional licensing implications - treating it as a simple "patch" to 7.x is not realistc. But we're also not throwing 7.x out the door just as soon as 8.0 is going to EFT.

Ahhhhh.. what a relief!!

Thanks for your clarification of the EFT point, which I have had overlooked in the past.

I guess it will be a major overhaul than just a Feature Add (just like we did from 1700 to 1800 or 2600XM to 2800 etc).

Anyways, glad to hear that End Customers and the Support Guys (like me) wont have to chase down the ver 8.0 within an year or so (but surely I would prefer to update myself ASAP).

Thanks a lot, and appreciate your timely reply (+5.0 points for that!)

Regards

WS

Happy Unified Communications!!

Got a request :) Would it be possible with this version to make it possible to edit the system prompts/conversations? At least the Sign-in prompt? I have a few customers who find it confusing when Unity prompts them to add their userID instead of asking for their extension.....

Thanks..

Editing prompts such as it is will probably never be supported by Unity or Connection - for a request like this it would have to be provided in the conversation (phrase logic) as an option to use one term or the other.

I know it seems like just hacking and slashing the prompt files should be a no brainer and we're just being obstinate by not allowing it but that's not the case.

Many of the prompts used to construct the language specific phrase files are used in more than one place (i.e. each phrase does not have duplicate WAV files for each "token" used to make up the complete phrase - they get shared) - so it's a dangerous thing to go in and start replacing prompts here and there since it many times has unintended consequences. Supporting folks going in and making such changes and then calling TAC because something "sounds funny" is a daunting task as you can imagine.

once you open that up to other languages it gets gnarly in a hurry. The last voice mail system I dealt with that actually allowed for this type of thing was Repartee (DOS based system back in the 90s) - and when it got ported to OS/2 and then Windows support for direct prompt edits was yanked for the same reasons.

so long way of saying direct prompt edits are not in our future I don't think. I can pass on your concerns with "ID" vs. "Extension" anyway...

Great explaination, Thank you!!!

skravens0929
Level 1
Level 1

Laura,

This sounds interesting. What is the process for getting involved with this?

I'm interested in testing this in my lab...

Justin Brenton
Level 4
Level 4

Hi Laura,

I'm interested in testing this release.

Regards,

Justin

Thank you very much for your interest in the Unity Connection 8.0 EFT. Unfortunately, the EFT has already started and is full. If you send me an email to lvernum@cisco.com, I will add your name to the list for notification about future Unity Connection EFT opportunities.

Many thanks,

Laura

Chris Deren
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Can someone let me know where I can find "Message recall-Subscribers" feature in UCON 8/

8.5 as no docuemntation talks about it?

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