Integrating Unity with Octel

[jaywydra]

I'm getting ready to integrate Unity with his Avaya Octel system. He is being told by Avaya and Cisco that he will need to load all of the (I guess phone numbers, etc) of all of the people behind the 78 Octel systems into Unity. In this case that would be approx. 70,000 users. Additionally, any time that a change is made on either the Octel or Unity, that a similar change would be needed on the other system. So from an on-going operational support, any change would really be 2 changes. Is this a correct statement? BTW... I will be using VPIM on the Unity side and an Avaya bridge on the Octel side.

[navinger]

If you check the Unity System Requirements doc, http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/voice/c_unity/sysreq/40_sysrq.htm#32054, you'll see that VPIM is not supported for use with any Octel systems.

Are the Octel systems networked using Octel analog networking (aka OctelNet)? If they are, then you can use the Cisco Unity Bridge to network Unity with the Octels. The Cisco Unity Bridge supports NameNet, which is an Octel directory sharing feature, so you won't need to load the 70,000 Octel users into Unity. In Unity terminology, this means that you won't need to create Bridge subscribers for these people because with NameNet, this happens automatically after the first time someone from Unity sends a message to an Octel user.

The Bridge is a powerful but complex feature. Before doing anything, I urge you to review the Cisco Unity Bridge training videos that you can download here http://www.ciscounitytools.com/App_Unity401TOI.htm, and review the product docs here: http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/voice/c_unity/bridge21/index.htm.