Not long ago I wrote about a way to connect Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging and Asterisk open-source telephony. Since then, blogger Ryan Newington, an IT pro from Melbourne, Australia, has written Accessing Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging, a tutorial that covers the same topic.
This tutorial, however, goes into far greater detail and employs a lot more hand-holding at each step, so I recommend starting with this one first.
Ryan's step-by-step instructions begin with the hardware and software requirements -- such as what edition of Exchange Server 2007 you'll need and how to get it. He also explains how to obtain two additional pieces of the puzzle: sipX, the Linux-based IP PBX system to route calls between VoIP systems, and Asterisk open-source telephony.
The instructions for obtaining both sipX and Asterisk involve using a preconfigured VMware virtual machine for the sake of convenience. There's no reason you can't download the original, full products and install them on a computer; however, it's more economical to use a virtual machine, especially if you're setting things up for testing purposes only.
This tutorial also guides you through setting up the exact implementation of the phone
system and how to configure the Exchange Server, sipX and Asterisk boxes to match the design you've chosen.
I like how Ryan spells out specific quirks in detail, for instance the fact that sipX is very fussy about name resolution (i.e., IP addresses vs. domain names). This information provides specific pitfalls to avoid while setting up Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging with sipX and Asterisk open-source telephony.
He also includes external references to troubleshooting documents. The comments on each of the blog entries are also worth browsing; if you experience a problem setting up Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging with sipX and Asterisk, there's a chance someone else in the comments section has encountered the same issue and might even have a fix.
About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of Windows Insight, a newsletter devoted to hints, tips, tricks, news and goodies for all flavors of Windows users.
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