Changing users

[admin_2]

Is there a way to change the exchange alias that a given subscriber points to?<br> <br><br>

[#2]

I’m not sure I understand your question… A Unity subscriber IS and Exchange mail user. We don’t have a separate account that “points” to a different Exchange alias… we modify the properties of a standing Exchange user to make them a subscriber.

You can certainly change the alias of their Exchange account if that’s what you’re asking. As long as you make sure it’s unique, this wont cause Unity any particular trouble.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#3]

I apologize, I will be specific as to what I am trying to accomplist. I have a customer who wanted to implement the Unity in a rather strange way. They had me install the Unity as part of their exchange org. They then had me create separate users instead of importing the current Exchange users. I then hid those new "Unity Exchange Users" from the GAL. There were a bunch of politcal reasons this was done that don't make much sense and therefore I won't get into the details.

Now, the customer wishes to go fully unified and on a NEW server. The problem I have is that all of the Unity Exchange users are homesited to the Unity's Exchange store. The customer will handle moving the current messages from the user's Unity Exchange box to the user's Enterprise Exchange email box to prepare for the Unified messaging. What I need to do is instead of having a given user's Unity box point to Unity specific email box, I want it to point the user's Enterprise Exchange email box. I also need to have the user keep their current greeting and name recordings.

I guess basically I am trying to "point" the Unity's voicemail box objects (name,greeing, etc) to an "Enterprise Exchange box" instead of the current "Unity Exchange box".

I figured I would have to load up the server up to the operating system. Restore from tape the IS/DS and everything else. Which would make the NEW server roughly the same as the old as long as I took the old server off of the network. I wasn't sure from here how I could point the voicemail box to the Enterprise Exchange email as opposed the Unity Exchange

Hope this help clarifies my situation and not confuse it more. Sorry for then length!

Thanks in advance.

[#4]

Well… I’m afraid you’re in a jam. The primary problem is your desire to “point” the Unity subscriber data at a different mailbox does not work because we don’t store that information externally and then reference it by pointing at it. We really do stuff subscriber information directly into extended attributes right on the Exchange mail user record itself. It’s not a matter of simply pointing a data record from an external database to a different mail user and your done. We are really unified, right down to the directory. This has a lot of advantages, obviously, but in your case it works against you here.

I’m assuming since you’ve created two mailuser accounts for each user in the site that they have different aliases (or did you create the users in different sites?). If so, you can’t even use the import/export tools on my web site since they’ll do the lookups for applying the user data on import based on the alias. If a match is not found it’ll build a new mail user on the local Unity box and you’re right back where you’re started.

It sounds to me like the only option you have is to install Unity fresh and import the Exchange users they have on their new server as subscribers again. This should be a fairly easy matter if the Business Phone field is prepopulated with their extension number since the bulk import should be able to grab everyone in one shot. Folks will need to go through first time enrollment again and the like but I don’t think that’s avoidable given the path they’ve taken.

I’ve warned about this in some other posts… you’re not the only one to have tried to ease into a site using a separate store model and then want to kick over to unified once the site got used to it. There’s simply no good way to transition here… if on the off chance you have the "voice mail only" mail users setup with the same alias in a different site and they match up with the aliases of their "regular email" mail users, you may be able to use the import/export tools on my site, but I’m kinda doubtful that’s the case (it rarely is).


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#5]

Yeah, I was afraid of that. How is this for plan 2. I import all of the Exchange users onto the new Unity platform. I then do a manual copy/paste of all of the users names and greetings from the old Unity to/from a file. I then on "cut night" or should I say "cut weekend" move the voicemessages from the old Unity Exchange profiles to the Exchange profiles. I beleive this should work just a lot of keyboard time.

PS - might I suggest a tool that imports/exports subscriber info by extension? So the imported/exported database would be tied to the extension rather then alias.

PSS - your Unity tools are extremely helpful. The bulkedit tool as saved countless time.....Thanks

[#6]

Yikes… that’s a lot of copying and pasting… Any reason why you can’t just flag all users for first time enrollment? It only takes them 2 minutes or so to cruise through it and set a PW, record a greeting and voice name and you’re all locked down. The big information you lose here is any notification devices they may have setup or custom transfer strings and the like. You’re not going to be manually setting those I’m sure… I suppose if you’ve got the time and the willingness, there's nothing wrong with going wild on the copy and paste action.

Yeah, I’ve given a lot of thought and whiteboard time to how a tool could be crafted to help with the “POV to UM” migration problem. Nothing really works very well. The extension thing has a flaw in that it requires I be able to find new users in the new exchange site by extension number and they wont yet be subscribers (and as such, wont have extensions assigned to them).

The alias match up works in rare cases and you can use the import/export tools for that, but this is not the normal case by any means. I’ve also thought about just having two gigantic grids that have sortable columns for first/last name, alias etc… and let admins manually link up subscribers from the old POV Unity database on the left to Exchange mail users in the new site on the right or something. This would work but would be insanely tedious for very large sites and rather error prone I’d think… I suppose it might fill a need, however.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#7]

Yep there is a reason, they are lawyers -- AHHHHHHH!

They actually have hit me with another applications problem err I mean oppurtunity. Is there any way to set up a call handler so that I can transfer directly to any subscribers greeting instead of transfering to an extension. This is a real problem for the operator because she gets a call that asks for an attorney's voicemail only and the amount of keystrokes she has to go through is a little much. Thanks for everything