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.