20.7.1 Message Type Overview
A unified messaging application can receive, send, store, and administer messages of many types, including text messages, voice mail, fax mail, image data, and other data formats. The message store allows you to define up to 63 different message types.
One method of manipulating messages by type is to organize the messages by their types into individual folders.
With the introduction of the message type feature, you do not have to maintain different message types in individual mailbox folders. Once you configure a message type, the message store can identify it, no matter where it is stored. Thus, you can store heterogeneous message types in the same folder. You also can perform the following tasks:
-
Track the usage of message types
-
Send notifications grouped by message type
-
Set and administer different quotas for different message types, whether they are stored in the same folder or different folders
-
Move messages from one folder to another, according to criteria configured uniquely for each message type
-
Expire messages according to criteria configured for each message type
20.7.1.1 Planning the Message-Type Configuration
In a unified messaging application, data of heterogeneous formats are given standard internet message headers so that Messaging Server can store and manage the data. For example, when voice mail is sent to an end-user's phone, a telephone front-end system adds a message header to the incoming voice mail and delivers it to the message store.
In order to recognize and administer messages of different types, all components of the unified messaging system must use the same message-type definitions and the same header fields to identify the messages.
Before you configure the message store to support message types, you must
-
Plan which message types you intend to use
-
Decide on the definition for each message type
-
Decide which header field to use
For example, if your application includes phone messages, you can define this message type as “multipart/voice-message” and use the Content-Type header field to identify message types.
You would then configure the telephone front-end system to add the following header information to each phone message to be delivered to the message store:
Content-Type: multipart/voice-message
Next, you would configure the message store to recognize the multipart/voice-message message type, as described in the sections that follow.
20.7.1.2 Defining and Using Message Types
You define a message type by giving it a unique definition such as multipart/voice-message. By default, the message store reads the Content-Type header field to determine the message-type. If you prefer, you can configure a different header field to identify the message types.
The message store reads the Content-Type (or other specified) header field, ignoring case. That is, the message store accepts the header field as valid even if the header's combination of uppercase and lowercase letters differs from the expected combination.
The message store reads only the message-type name in the header field. It ignores additional arguments or parameters.
To define a message type, use the configutil utility to set values for the store.messagetype parameters. For instructions, see To Configure Message Types.
Configuring a message type allows the message store to identify and manipulate messages of the specified type. It is the first, essential step in administering message types in a unified messaging application.
To take full advantage of the message-type features provided by the message store, you also should perform some or all of the following tasks:
-
Configure a JMQ notification plug-in and write Message Queue clients for retrieving notifications that track the status of the message types
-
Configure quota roots that apply to each message type
-
Write expire rules and set LDAP attribute values to expire and purge messages according to message type
These tasks are summarized in the following sections:
- © 2010, Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates