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Here are answers to some questions asked by customers and partners about Office 365 UM.
The biggest difference, of course, is that for Office 365 UM, the features are delivered as an online service. For Exchange 2010 UM, customers generally must own and manage the UM (and the other Exchange servers) themselves.
For end users, features (e.g. Voice Mail Preview, Call Answering Rules) are almost all available and behave as they do in Exchange 2010 UM. The one feature area that is not available in the current release of Office 365 UM is speech access to the directory (global address list; GAL). Instead, users must identify the person that they want to contact by spelling their name with the telephone keypad. All other speech features in Outlook Voice Access (mail, calendar, personal contacts) are available. For more information, see Differences between an On-premises deployment of UM and UM deployment in the Cloud.
Does Office 365 UM provide a “dial tone”?
No. The Office 365 UM customer is required to provide the means to make and receive telephone calls. At the moment, this means that the customer needs a PBX, or other voice solution (e.g. Microsoft Lync Server 2010) that will work with UM.
There is a list at the Telephony Advisor for Exchange 2010. The list includes not only PBXs, but also voice-over-IP (VoIP) gateways and Session Border Controllers (SBCs). A VoIP gateway is needed if your PBX does not itself support VoIP. In such cases, the gateway must be cabled to the PBX and attached to your IP network.
If your PBX does not appear on the list, it’s possible that it can still be made to work with UM. However, Microsoft is unable to offer support for the use of such devices with Office 365 UM. Systems integration partners that are experienced with the make/model of PBX, and with UM, may be able to help.
No. You will need Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Lync introduces new architecture (hosting providers, hosted voice mail policies, etc.) that are required to work with Office 365 UM.
Unless you are using Microsoft Lync Server 2010, you will need a Session Border Controller (SBC), from the list of SBCs supported by Office 365 UM. This list is also included with the Telephony Advisor for Exchange 2010. Lync customers do not need SBCs, but instead need to use the Lync Edge Server role.
The purpose of the SBC is to protect the customer’s private network against attack and intrusion. It is intended for use at the edge of the network. The SBC controls the flow of VoIP traffic from the private network to the public network (Internet), and vice versa. It rewrites addressing information in headers when SIP messages pass from one network interface to the other. It secures the signaling and media data between itself and Office 365. It may restrict or deny traffic from sources that are untrusted, or that behave badly (e.g. denial-of-service attack).
Figure 1 . Connecting to Exchange UM in the Enterprise
Figure 1 shows the VoIP connections to Exchange UM in an enterprise. For the purposes of illustration, this enterprise is using three products for voice: a PBX (that does not understand VoIP), an IP PBX and Microsoft Lync Server.
All VoIP connectivity between these systems and Exchange UM passes only through the enterprise’s internal IP network. The customer must purchase and configure a VoIP Gateway to connect the PBX to Exchange UM via the network. The PBX and VoIP gateway communicate with one of a variety of telephony protocols.
For VoIP signaling and media between the gateway or IP PBX and Exchange UM, the customer can choose to use unsecured (SIP/TCP, RTP) or secured (SIP/TLS, SRTP) protocols. Microsoft Lync and Exchange UM always must use secured protocols.
Figure 2 . Connecting to Office 365 UM
Figure 2 shows the VoIP connections if the customer uses Office 365 UM instead.
As before, all VoIP communication passes through the customer’s internal network. However, UM is now located in a Microsoft Datacenter, and so the VoIP traffic must also cross the public IP network to reach UM. The customer has placed a Session Border Controller and a Microsoft Lync Edge Server at the edge of their network. All traffic from the VoIP Gateway and IP PBX to and from UM passes through the SBC. All traffic from the Lync passes through the Lync Edge Server. (There are also SBCs and Lync Edge Servers in the Microsoft Datacenter, but these are not shown to keep the diagram simpler).
All VoIP communication with Office 365 UM is secured.
Yes. However, as with the mailboxes, you will have two different UM setups to manage. For the online mailboxes, Office 365 UM can provide the voice mail. For the on-premises mailboxes, Exchange UM servers on your premises must be used. It is possible to use a single voice infrastructure (Lync or PBX) to communicate with both on-premises and online UM systems. To do this, you will need to set up split call routing. For Lync, this is done with Hosted Voice Mail Policies.
Is UM available to all Office 365 users?
No. The customer must have the infrastructure required to connect to Office 365 UM (Figure 2), and they must also ensure that they have purchased the correct license for each user that requires UM. This license is included with Exchange Plan 2 and with Office 365 for Enterprises Plan 3.
To enable a user for UM, the country specified in their business address must be one where UM service is offered. For more information, see About licensing restrictions. If the Exchange Online entry for the country says No restrictions, then you can enable an Office 365 Exchange user, based in that country, for UM.
All of the languages supported by Exchange UM are available for use. The list is included in the article on Exchange 2010 UM, titled Understanding Unified Messaging Languages.