Using a Group mail box voicemail with Response Groups

This was a interesting project I completed recently but in the end it was pretty simple. Using the group mailbox as the voicemail deposit for a response group is great when multiple people need access to the information. My requirement was when different people are on call and need access to off hour’s voicemails to meet their SLA. There are a couple of steps but its no different than setting up a user in OCS and enabling them for Unified Messaging in Exchange 2007.

Step 1. Enable the group mailbox Active Directory account for OCS and enterprise voice. Since you are not going to be directly routing calls to the OCS user there is no need to use a PSTN DID. I like the fake number range 555-555-0100 to 0199 as it will never be used on the PSTN.

Step 2. Enable group mailbox for unified messaging. Again with the fake number as the subscriber extension. I also like to use the response group PSTN DID as a second extension for the user as this means that the fake number isn’t required to be advertised for those that need to call into Outlook Voice Access to check voicemail. They only need to know the extension of the response group.

Step 3. Add the group mailbox SIP URI to the response group for queue timeout and overflow to go to voicemail.

Step 4. Setup the voicemail greeting message for the group mailbox.

Pretty simple but very effective. I am sure there are a few variations to this configuration that I just haven’t tried but this worked well and the customer was happy which makes me happy.

Response groups are something that aren’t talked about much as far as flexibility and different things you can do with them. So if you have an interesting configuration please let me know.

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