Table Of Contents

Planning to Install Cisco Visual Voicemail

Visual Voicemail

Accessing Visual Voicemail

Potential Error Message on Phones During Installation

Before You Install Visual Voicemail

About Visual Voicemail Ports

Consumption of Port Licenses by Visual Voicemail

Ports and Protocols Used by Visual Voicemail

Prerequisites for Installing Visual Voicemail

Installing Phone Firmware

Installing Servers

Planning to Install Cisco Visual Voicemail

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Revised: November 20, 2009

•Visual Voicemail

•Accessing Visual Voicemail

•Before You Install Visual Voicemail

•About Visual Voicemail Ports

•Prerequisites for Installing Visual Voicemail

Visual Voicemail

The Visual Voicemail application is an alternative to audio, or telephone user interface (TUI), voicemail service. You use the screen on your phone to work with your voice messages.

You can view a list of your messages and play your messages from the list. You can also compose, reply to, forward, and delete messages.

Visual Voicemail uses the following:

•A MIDlet. The MIDlet is installed when you update your Cisco Unity or Cisco Unity Connection server to the release required by Visual Voicemail.

•A phone service that points to the MIDlet. You install this phone service on the phones in your Unified Communications system.

To enable your users to use Visual Voicemail, you must perform the following tasks:

1. Ensure that you have read and understood all of the information in Before You Install Visual Voicemail.

2. Ensure that your Unified Communications system meets all of the prerequisites referred to in Prerequisites for Installing Visual Voicemail.

3. Configuring Cisco Visual Voicemail on Your Cisco Unified Communications System

4. (Optional) Configuring Security for Cisco Visual Voicemail

5. Installing Cisco Visual Voicemail on Phones

6. (Optional) Configuring Key Mappings in Visual Voicemail

7. (Optional) Provide information about Visual Voicemail to your users, as listed in Appendix A, "Additional User Information".

Accessing Visual Voicemail

Typically, you press the Messages button to start Visual Voicemail. You do not need to open a line before you start Visual Voicemail. Do not pick up the handset, or open a line in any other way, before you start Visual Voicemail.

To avoid disturbing others when you listen to your messages, pick up the handset. Pick up the handset only after Visual Voicemail has opened the line, that is, when the line button is lit.

Potential Error Message on Phones During Installation

If users press the Messages button on their phones before the installation of the Visual Voicemail service has completed, the following error message is displayed:

Error, contact administrator

Advise your users that they might encounter this error during the outage window when you install the Visual Voicemail service.

Before You Install Visual Voicemail

Before you install Visual Voicemail, consider the following:

•The installation of Visual Voicemail requires coordinated actions from the Cisco Unified Communications Manager administrator and from the Cisco Unity or Cisco Unity Connection administrator. The administrators need to plan to install Visual Voicemail in a coordinated way, and communicate regularly with one another.

•Decide whether you want to replace the TUI voicemail service with Visual Voicemail, or whether to enable users to choose which service to use. For more information about this topic, see How Visual Voicemail Interoperates with TUI Voicemail, page 5-11.

•Decide whether you want to implement security for Visual Voicemail. If you configure security for Visual Voicemail, the traffic between phones and the voicemail servers is secure.

When you implement security, you must sign a Certificate Trust List (CTL) file. To sign a CTL file, you need at least one security eToken. If it is the first time that the CTL file is being signed, you need two security eTokens. You might need to order these items some time before you install Visual Voicemail.

•Ensure that traffic is allowed on the required ports before you install Visual Voicemail. For more information about this topic, see About Visual Voicemail Ports.

•Install Visual Voicemail during a period of light usage of your voice message service.

•Consider whether to advise your users that they might encounter the Error, contact administrator error during the outage window when you install the Visual Voicemail service. For more information about this topic, see Potential Error Message on Phones During Installation.

•Due to memory limitations on phones, you cannot run any other MIDlets on phones on which Visual Voicemail is installed. Before you install Visual Voicemail on your phones, uninstall any other MIDlets from the phones.

About Visual Voicemail Ports

•Consumption of Port Licenses by Visual Voicemail

•Ports and Protocols Used by Visual Voicemail

Consumption of Port Licenses by Visual Voicemail

The usage of ports by Visual Voicemail is similar to the usage of ports by the TUI voicemail service.

When you start Visual Voicemail, Visual Voicemail automatically uses a port to open a line and call the voicemail server. On Cisco Unity the call times out after two minutes. On Cisco Unity Connection the call times out after one minute.

You might not need to buy new port licenses for your Visual Voicemail service. Use Visual Voicemail with your existing ports before you make a decision to buy new port licenses.

Ports and Protocols Used by Visual Voicemail

For Visual Voicemail to work successfully, traffic must be allowed on certain ports between the phone VLAN and the voicemail server. The following table lists the ports and the protocols required:

Port	Protocol	Required For...
80	HTTP	All deployments.
443	HTTPS	Secure deployments.

Prerequisites for Installing Visual Voicemail

Before you install Visual Voicemail, check that your system meets all the necessary prerequisites. Ensure that you have the correct versions of all the required software, as listed in the release notes at the following URL:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9829/prod_release_notes_list.html

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Note Your Cisco Unity or Cisco Unity Connection server, your Cisco Unified Communications Manager server, and the phone firmware must be at the versions that are specified in the release notes. If the servers and firmware are not at the correct versions, Visual Voicemail might fail to install, or fail to function correctly.

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Note The release number of Visual Voicemail does not indicate the releases of Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unity or Cisco Unity Connection that are supported. For this information, see the release notes.

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Installing Phone Firmware

For information about how to install phone firmware, see the documentation for the phone to which you want to install the firmware.

Installing Servers

For information about how to install server upgrades for Cisco Unity Connection or Cisco Unified Communications Manager from an .iso file, see Cisco Unified Communications Operating System Administration Guide at the following URL:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps556/prod_maintenance_guides_list.html

For information about how to install server upgrades for Cisco Unity, see the release notes for the relevant Engineering Special (ES), or see Cisco Unity documentation at the following URL:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps2237/tsd_products_support_series_home.html