Creating a Unified Messaging Dial Plan

Dial Plans

This is part #7 from "Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging for administrators," excerpted from Chapter 9 of the book Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference, published by McGraw-Hill Osborne Media.

A UM dial plan defines a link from the telephone extension number of a user to the corresponding UM-enabled mailbox. Regions around the world have different access numbers and extension patterns.

Dial plans allow you to specify unique dialing rules for different locations in your organization. UM dial plans store the configuration information necessary to communicate with the telephony system in Active Directory. Each UM dial plan has an associated UM mailbox policy.

SP1: The New Dial Plan Wizard is enhanced in SP1. This allows you to configure the URI type and VoIP security level.

Creating a Dial Plan

Use the following steps to create a new Dial Plan:

1. Open the Exchange Management Console with an administrator account that has the Exchange Organization Administrator role.
2. Expand "Organization Configuration" and select "Unified Messaging."
3. Select "New UM Dial Plan" in the "Actions" pane.
4. Type the name of the dial plan in the "Name" field, as shown below.
5. Enter a value that matches the number of digits in your users' extensions in the field "Number of digits in extension numbers." The default is 5.
6. Select the option in the URI Type drop-down list that is recommended by your IP gateway or IP PBX vendor. The options are:
   • Telephone Extension (Default)
   • E.164
   • SIP URI
7. Choose a security method from the VoIP security drop-down list. The options are:
   • SIP secured
   • Unsecured (default)
   • Secured
8. Click "New."
9. Click "Finish."

As an alternative to the EMC, you can also use the New-UMDialplan cmdlet in the EMS, like in this example:

[PS]C:>New-UMDialplan -Name "Rochester NY" -NumberofDigits 5

If you do not choose a URI type or a VoIP security option, the default values will be used.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging for administrators

 Home: Introduction to Unified Messaging on Exchange 2007
 Part 1: An intro to voice systems for Exchange administrators
 Part 2: Unified Messaging features in Exchange Server 2007
 Part 3: Defining Exchange Unified Messaging architecture
 Part 4: Deploying Unified Messaging servers on Exchange Server 2007
 Part 5: Comparing VoIP PBX solutions for Unified Messaging
 Part 6: Integrating Unified Messaging servers with a VoIP solution
 Part 7: Creating a Unified Messaging Dial Plan
 Part 8: Configuring a Unified Messaging IP gateway
 Part 9: Mailbox policy configuration for Unified Messaging
 Part 10: Creating and assigning a Unified Messaging hunt group
 Part 11: Dialing rules and restrictions for Unified Messaging users
 Part 12: Assigning Unified Messaging dialing rules to a mailbox policy
 Part 13: Executing Unified Messaging grammar generation
 Part 14: Enabling Unified Messaging mailboxes and users

This chapter excerpt from Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference, by Richard Luckett, William Lefkovics and Bharat Suneja, is printed with permission from McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, Copyright 2008. Click here for the chapter download or purchase the book here.