10 Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g Voicemail & Fax Concepts

Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g Voicemail & Fax 10g is a standards-based voice mail system that integrates tightly with other Oracle Collaboration Suite components, providing a centralized message and retrieval store for voice mail and faxes, as well as telephone processing, message delivery, browser-based clients, and administration utilities.

Oracle Voicemail & Fax provides access to voice mail through multiple channels including telephones, standards-based e-mail clients (either IMAP4 or POP3), and the Web. Oracle Voicemail & Fax stores messages in industry standard formats (.wav for voice mail and.tif for fax), so the choice of audio players and image viewing applications is left to end-users. The use of standard formats provides end-users with greater flexibility in accessing messages from any computer system and forwarding them to anyone with e-mail access.

This chapter contains the following sections:

Oracle Voicemail & Fax Features
Oracle Voicemail & Fax End User Benefits
Related Documentation for Oracle Voicemail & Fax

Oracle Voicemail & Fax Features

The following sections describe the key features of Oracle Voicemail & Fax:

Unified Message Store
Voice Over IP Deployment Flexibility
Adherence to Industry Standards
Fax Capabilities
Wireless Notifications
Voice Interface
Centralized Management
Development Tools
Simplified Administration

Unified Message Store

Oracle Voicemail & Fax uses the Oracle Mail message store (which is the Oracle Collaboration Suite database), for storage of voice mail and fax messages. The Oracle Collaboration Suite database provides the storage and common access methods for e-mail, voice mail, and fax messages in standard MIME format within the same repository. Using the Oracle Collaboration Suite Database as the base, all messages (including voice mails) are available through standard IMAP4 or POP3 e-mail clients.

Voice Over IP Deployment Flexibility

Oracle Voicemail & Fax provides additional deployment flexibility by allowing all voice mail applications to be consolidated in one place. A centralized, SIP-based Voicemail & Fax Server supports one or more Voice Over IP (VoIP) gateways connected to legacy PBX systems. Distributed telephony card-based deployments are supported as well.

Adherence to Industry Standards

Oracle Voicemail & Fax telephone applications are built on the Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum (ECTF) standards. These standards define the infrastructure needed to build and support platform-independent CT applications and enable Oracle Voicemail & Fax applications to easily integrate with a variety of enterprise and carrier class switches.

Fax Capabilities

Oracle Voicemail & Fax provides users with inbound fax capabilities. Faxes sent to an Oracle Collaboration Suite user's phone number are delivered directly into the user's inbox. Faxes are stored as MIME compliant .tif attachments that can be viewed, printed or forwarded to any e-mail address using standards-based desktop or Web clients.

Wireless Notifications

In conjunction with Oracle Mobile Collaboration and Oracle Mail, Oracle Voicemail & Fax can send e-mail notifications to other e-mail accounts and wireless devices enabled for e-mail. Oracle Collaboration Suite also includes direct one-way and two-way communication with a number of popular SMS systems and pager networks.

Voice Interface

Oracle Voicemail & Fax provides a basic dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) voice-mail interface and the ability to change user preferences through the telephone interface. Since Oracle Voicemail & Fax uses a single message store, actions taken on a message or changes made to account preferences through the voice channel are visible through all channels.

Centralized Management

Oracle Voicemail & Fax administration is integrated into Oracle Enterprise Manager, allowing consolidated management of the entire Oracle environment, providing support for integration into systems-monitoring infrastructure. Oracle Voicemail & Fax supports multiple domains in the same system and allows for central or distributed administration in a hosted environment.

Development Tools

A comprehensive set of PL/SQL and Java APIs are provided to integrate Oracle Mail and Oracle Voicemail & Fax with other core eBusiness infrastructures. These APIs provide the ability to read, retrieve, copy, and move messages. A complete set of server-side rules and filters allows end-users and administrators to execute actions on voice mail messages with defined characteristics (for example, "notify me when a voice mail from my spouse has been received").

Simplified Administration

Oracle Voicemail & Fax provides an at-a-glance status of all voice mail systems with drill-down capabilities, allowing administrators to quickly diagnose and resolve issues. Oracle Voicemail & Fax provides over one hundred and fifty metrics and allows administrators to create additional metrics based on their specific requirements. Alerts and associated warning levels can be set for each metric.

An administrator can quickly determine the behavior and status of each process as well as stop, start, and reload all processes associated with the system or an individual site.

Oracle Voicemail & Fax End User Benefits

Oracle Voicemail & Fax provides voice mail and directory features to end-users with the added benefit of integrated unified messaging.

Forward Voice mails to Personal Address Book Aliases

Oracle Voicemail & Fax makes personal address book contacts available for addressing through the voice menu. These address book listings can contain any e-mail address.

Distribution List Support

Oracle Voicemail & Fax allows users to address messages to personal distribution lists containing both phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Recipients can be Oracle Collaboration Suite users (email only, e-mail and voice mail, or voice mail only) or external e-mail addresses.

Message Listen Controls

Oracle Voicemail & Fax users can speed up, slow down, skip back, skip forward and pause while listening to voice mail messages using phone keys.

Web-based Preference Management

Oracle Voicemail & Fax users can manage their voice preferences via the Oracle Collaboration Suite Web client or Oracle Connector for Outlook. This includes choosing the distribution lists accessible to the voice menu, voice menu language choice, dial-out extension, voice mail password, and active greeting.

Reduced Message Access Time

Using a single, unified messaging system means a user's content is stored and organized in the same location. This unification reduces a user's daily message access time.

Simplified Fax Delivery

Having faxes delivered directly to their inboxes means users do not have to make that extra trip to the fax machine while simultaneously providing them with a greater level of privacy.