Cisco Unified Messaging Plug-in (Unity Voicemail) for Lotus Sametime

If your users want access to their voice mail from their Lotus Notes client, and you use Cisco Unity or Unity Connection voice mail, then you should check out the free Unified Messaging plug-in from Cisco.

You can deploy the UM plug-in to either the stand-alone Sametime Connect client, or to the sidebar in your Lotus Notes client.  The plug-in pulls your voice mail from your Unity server, and displays a list of the voice mail in the plug-in.  Keeping the voice mail in the Notes client means that users conveniently have access to all messages, email or voice mail.  Keeping the voice mail separate from the in box means that users don't lose voice mail amidst hundreds of emails.

If the voice mail was left by a recognized caller, the message is listed by caller name, along with the date and time the message was left.  If the message was from an unknown caller, it is listed by the phone number that called.  Unheard messages have an unopened envelope icon displayed in front of them, and are listed with bold text.  An indicator is also placed in the Windows notification area in case you don't have your client open when the voice mail is received.

Double-clicking on the voice mail entry will launch a player to play back the voice mail through your PC.

 You can control the playback of the voice mail, and delete it when you're done listening as well.  Listening to the voice mail will change the indicators in the plug-in to show that the message has been heard.  It will also cause the lamp on your desk phone to turn off since this is synced with the Unity server.

Right-clicking on a voice mail listing provides you with a range of options for working with the it, including the option to forward the voice mail as wav file attachment to an email.

If this plug-in is deployed along with the Phone Control and Presence plug-in from Cisco, it inherits additional capabilities from that plug-in.  These include:

• Displaying the phone presence information for any recognized user that had left a voice mail.  (So if you want to call this person back, you know whether she is currently on the phone or not.)
• Providing you the ability to click-to-call to the number that had left the voice mail.  (Sparing you the need key in the phone number when you do call her back.)

 You can find the system requirements for the plug-in on Cisco's web site.