Execute Outlook Voice Access with Exchange Server 2007 (Part 2)

Execute Outlook Voice Access with Exchange Server 2007 (Part 1)

UM architecture

Exchange Server 2007 Outlook Voice Access is based on two important services:

1. Microsoft Exchange Unified Mail Service (UMservice.exe)
2. Microsoft Exchange Speech Engine service (SpeechService.exe)

Unified messaging service - Exchange Unified Messaging allows storing voice and fax messages in Exchange Server 2007 mailbox. In addition, it allows users to access voice and email, voice-mail. , schedules and contact entries. If the service is not running, then UM features are not available for all users in your organization. Microsoft Exchange Speech Engine service based on Microsoft Exchange unified messaging services. This service is responsible for:

1. Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF)
2. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
3. Text-to-Speech (TTS)

This service is essential to make Outlook Voice Access work properly. An overview of how all these services interact with each other can be found on Microsoft Technet.

Figure 1: Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging Architecture ( Source: Microsoft )

When considering the ports needed for UM functionality, we will see that the Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging service always listens on TCP port 5060 in insecure mode and TCP port 5061 when Mutual Transport Layer Security (MTLS) is used. use. Each UM worker process is created by listening on TCP ports 5065 and 5066 TCP. When an IP-Gateway is included and sends the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) to Speech Engine service worker process, it or the IP PBX will use a higher valid UDP port. With Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1, the expected changes may not be significant: The Exchange Unified Messaging Service will listen on TCP ports 5060 and 5061 at the same time; Each UM .NET worker process will listen on ports 5065 and 5067. If you only configure secure communications, it will use Port 5066 and 5068. So if you use Exchange Unified Messaging on firewalls, you should tell make sure the ports are open.

The integrated mail process of Exchange

If you look at the image below, you'll see how the Outlook Voice Access notification stream works:

Figure 2: Outlook Voice Access notification flow ( Source: Microsoft )

Exchange unified mail connection

Now that we understand how the services themselves interact, the next step is to connect it to a SIP-Gateway.

Although many VoIP or PBX devices are officially supported for Exchange Server 2007 to work with (Telephony Advisor for Exchange Server 2007), many companies still have problems with this implementation. . Therefore, we offer recommendations so you can do it more easily. In this article we will take a closer look at some of their problems:

1. DIVA SIP Control
2. Ferrari Office Master Gateway for Unified Messaging
3. Asterisk Software
4. Microsoft Partner UM Starter Kit

Dialogic SIP Control and Dialogic Media Gateways

Many companies still have an ISDN Server Adapter from Dialogic. This ISDN adapter can solve your problem. Diva SIPControl software module allows you to create an 8 channel PSTN / IP Gateway (more channels are also possible but you need a valid registration). SIPControl translates DIVA adapter's Call-Control-Information into SIP messages based on RFC 3261. You can download DIVA SIP Control software here. This is a PDF document that talks about supported devices.

Procedures on how to deploy DIVA SIP Control software are quite easy. After you have done this, the only thing you need to do is connect your Exchange Unified Messaging Configuration with DIVA SIP Control Solution.


If you are running Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging in a virtual environment (the environment is completely unsupported by Microsoft), this solution may not help, because you cannot directly connect DIVA adapter to virtual machine. Another way is to use the 'Dialogic Media Gateway for Microsoft Communications'. For more information on this issue you can refer here. This 'black box' is a solution based on Linux Software and the solution can be configured quite easily, you can connect it to any virtual machine that installs Exchange Server 2007.

Ferrari Office Master Gateway for unified mail

Ferrari Office Master Gateway is a Ferrari Electronic solution, this solution can easily be compared with Dialogic Media Gateway for Microsoft Communications. It is also based on Linux root, and has a web interface for configuration. For more information, please refer here.

3CX phone system

3CX provides a software-based SIP Gateway solution. Enterprise Edition of this software provides connectivity for Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging. It can be installed on Windows 2000/2003 / XP / Vista computers and can be easily configured.

Asterisk VoIP Gateway software

If you have a good knowledge of Linux software solutions, you can configure Asterisk VoIP. A free VMWare-based installation of Asterisk can be found at Trixbox, but its configuration is much more complicated. A brief description of it here.

Figure 3: Asterisk SIPXConfig

Conclude

When you have completed the above information, there are many ways to connect Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging Environment to PSTN or existing VoIP-Solution. Exchange Server itself works like a simple VoIP device; It does not have VoIP Gateway solution. If you do not have a PBX solution to provide this interface, you will have to choose whether you want to run a 'black box' solution based on hardware or software-based tools like Asterisk, Dialogic SIPControl, or 3CX Phone System for Windows or not.