Creating and assigning a Unified Messaging hunt group

Unified Messaging hunt group

This is part #10 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.

The UM hunt group is an Active Directory object used to represent an actual hunt group on a PBX. From the perspective of a UM servers deployment, the UM hunt group links a pilot number (inbound call number) to a specific UM dial plan. An administrator can specify a specific pilot number by assigning a custom hunt group to a dial plan.

Additionally, the dial plan will need to be associated with one or more UM servers. The UM hunt group itself is created for a specific UM IP gateway object. It is also possible to create more than one UM hunt group per UM IP gateway. These objects work together in the following order:

1. The IP gateway initiates a session with the UM server by using SIP.
2. The SIP header includes the pilot number.
3. The UM server verifies that the number in the SIP header is part of a particular hunt group.
4. The associated UM server accepts the call.

Two parameters in a UM hunt group can be configured: the UM dial plan and the pilot identifier or pilot number. You will add the UM hunt group to the UM IP gateway that you previously created and then specify the UM dial plan you want to link to. Finally, specifying a pilot number and creating the new UM hunt group allows the UM server to begin accepting inbound calls.

Creating a new UM hunt group

Use the following steps to create a new UM hunt group:

1. Open the EMC with an administrator account that has the Exchange Organization Administrator role.
2. Expand "Organization Configuration" and click "Unified Messaging."
3. Select the "UM IP Gateways" tab.
4. Select an existing UM IP gateway.
5. Select "New UM Hunt Group" in the "Actions" pane.
6. Type the name of the hunt group in the "Name" field, as shown below.
7. Click "Browse," select the UM dial plan you want to link to, and then click "OK."
8. Type the number of the pilot identifier for the hunt group and then click "New." (Be sure to enter in the correct pilot number because you cannot change this number without removing and then re-creating the hunt group.)
9. Click "Finish."

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

[PS]C:>New-UMHuntGroup -Name "ROC-HG" -PilotIdentifier 12700 -UMDialplan "Rochester NY" -UMIPGateway "AudioCodes - Mediant 2000"

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.