Update 2 Cisco IPT

I've been dealing with our Cisco rep and our IPT implementer trying to figure out why the deployment of key features that we've liked to roll out the the user base is so painful.

The installation of our IPT system went perfectly. The migration the the new system went well also. It's been up and running for a few months now and we are satisfied with the phone system itself. What we are not satisfied with is that features of the system require different password. Pretty much every feature of Cisco Unity Connection has a separate password with different credentials. What I mean is when we setup user template originally with Unity Connection the password is 8 characters. So we went with that not knowing that when we've setup other features these features required passwords that required 6 characters. HUH! So change one set to match everything, easy fix right? WRONG! When setting up the original users on the system before rolling out these additional features you can not change the template without wiping out the user. The Template is set in stone. So as a result the users had a voice mail password of 8 characters and a PCA (Personal Communications Assistant) password of 6 characters. Not to mention a Windows password that expires every 90 days. Also we wanted to roll out the IMAP feature that allows your voice mail to show up in you outlook in a different mailbox that also has a password. You see what I'm getting at. Too many DAMN password using Unity Connection and nobody told us this when we were buying it.

These little things are easily overlooked of too stupid to even ask if you are buying a 250K phone system. You would thing Cisco would streamline some of these features and the dumbest thing an ordinary person can think of would be there. Sadly that is not the case.

Another gripe with Cisco's IPT is that we went with Unity Connection b/c we did NOT want our voice mails stored on our exchange server which is what Unified Messaging does. Unified Messaging has all these feature single password (I think) but the VM's are stored inside the Exchange server. That's a NO NO on so many levels. Some companies have very strict email policies and emeil are deleted every X days. If VM's are in there they are automatically treated like emails and wiped out. Financial firms come to mind. Law firms also. So this is why Unity Connection is there. VM's are not stored on the Exchange server. They are kept in the Unity server. But Unity Connection has all the crap I discussed up top. So why don't they have the best of both worlds? Who knows! The ideal product will be Unified Messaging with the ability to pick where you wanted to store your voice mails. If I wanted them in my Exchange server that would be the default. If I wanted them on another server server with links to exchange that should be an option. It can be done this is America and we are in 2007 anything can be done. We use Symantic Enterprise Vault to archive emails that pulls emails out of the Exchange server and stores them in a database on another server/storage device but leaves a pointer to those archives. One click and it's back in seconds. The same thing can happen with VM too Cisco. Wake up!