Thanks, that seems to be the general consensus. I'll open a tac case tomorrow on it but it looks like I get to tell my customers they have been Ciscoed again. It's getting real tiresome defending these last several generations of phones. All these years later and the 7900s are still the best ones ever made. At least the 8800s seem to have enough CPU in them to keep up when you dial a number.

I'll update this thread with what I learn from tac. Maybe it will save some other poor soul from purchasing several hundred handsets only to find out they don't offer as much functionality as the 15 year old ones.

Hi Cryus,

To be fair, VV wasn't supported on majority of 7900 phones. Nothing below 7975 was supporting it. This is advanced feature which needs high end phones.

7800 doesn't support VV but 8800 series and 9971 (now declared EOL) does support. 

Hi Mohammed,

To be fair, and not to be rude,  but you are incorrect. This was not a high end feature requiring high end phones. I have it currently working with several 7900 based phones below the 7975.

Please review the following documentation, specifically the section regarding Cisco Unified IP phone requirements. Also see the note at the bottom which specifically states that the 9971 does not work. (Which is superceded in the 8.5 release notes, because of newer firmware, I enjoyed living through that as well) 

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cupa/visual_voicemail/7-1/english/release/vivoReleaseNote71.html

I know that doc is a bit dated but if you look at the 8.5 release notes in the same section regarding Cisco Unified IP Phone requirements it specifically references the 7.1 release notes. 

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cupa/visual_voicemail/8-5/release/notes/vivoReleaseNote85.html#wp45484

As an additional side note I find it fairly hilarious that the only place I was able to find information on configuring vv for 8800 phones is in a bug report. 

https://quickview.cloudapps.cisco.com/quickview/bug/CSCuq94508

Hi Cyrus,

I don't think you will be rude when saying technical information is incorrect. Don't worry about this part :)

I will list couple of points here:

1. 9971 supports VV. I have tested this more than 50 times during my CCIE preparation last year.  Ignore the document when it says that 9971 doesn't support VV. This is incorrect

2. 7900 has a very wide range of phones and I agree that my comment wasn't very accurate. But I know for instance that VV isn't supported on 7965/7945/7925. I didn't consider 7941/61 because they are end of support. Accordingly I said that you need 7975.

3. I agree that the documentation is quite poor when it comes to VV, but 8800 user guide includes support for VV. See below link last section

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cuipph/8800-series/english/userguide/P881_BK_CC6C5F2C_00_cisco-ip-phone-8800_series/P881_BK_CC6C5F2C_00_cisco-ip-phone-8811-8841_chapter_0101.html

Regards,

Mohammed Al Baqari