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I am looking at an ESI Communication Server 600, and really like the features of the VIP software. Here is my problem. We have a lot of users that are in meetings all day long w/o their laptops.

They all have some type of smartphone (blackberry, iPhone, etc), but without an e-mail notification of voicemail, they do not know they have a voicemail. I talked with them about external paging, but then they have to leave the meeting to see if the voicemail is from someone important.

Ideally, an actual e-mail w/ an attached audio file, caller id, and call time would be great.

Any solutions or ideas?

With VIP they would be able to "see" that they have a voicemail waiting, and the Caller ID/Time of the call, but you can't send an audio file to a smart device with VIP. They'd have to be alerted that they have VM or call back into the system after seeing new messages that were sent to the device via VIP.

To many other vendors have solutions to either convert VM's to text or attach an audio file that can be retrieved via a smart device. VIP and VIP Pro need to get with the program, they're quickly being passed by other integration products.

So if their laptop is turned off & VIP is not connected, there would be no way to get e-mail notification to a smartphone?

If you have VIP you can set it to remote notification. This will send notification e-mails with caller ID, duration and time of message to the address of your choice. It will work whether or not Outlook is running or whether your PC is on or off but you must have VIP enabled on your extension to use it.

Brian,

I just got off the phone with ESI tech support and they told me that the PC had to be on and running VIP for remote e-mail notifications to work. Do you know a trick around this?

I just shut my computer off and tried. We have an ESI50 Comm Server running the latest software. It works. It does not need a PC of any sort let alone VIP to work. The phone system's NSP works as a POP client.

You can even change the e-mail address from the telephone on user program 65. For this all to work the NSP must be programmed for e-mail in Installer function 824 and you need at least a VIP basic license for the extension.

Most people don't use the remote notification so I'm not surprised you got a tech that didn't know it could work without a PC. They have lot of great people at ESI tech support there but some have more experience than others, obviously.

Ok. One last question. I looked at one of the VIP manuals, and it shows setting up VIP for remote notifications (via e-mail) or local notifications (via VIP in Outlook).

Is it possible to have VIP in local notification mode, and still have the e-mail notifications? We don't want our users to have to keep switching back and forth from local and remote notifications. I would just like for them to get an e-mail notification (to their smartphone) any time they get a voicemail, and pull up outlook and click to listen to the message (without having to switch back and forth).

Hopefully I am making sense. Thanks!

Not at present (which means we are all hoping that will change- maybe at the next product rollout) . If you have it set up for "Remote" you need to use the phone to listen to your new voicemails. The VIP folders do not synchronize when you are in remote mode.