It tells Skype servers the DNS name to route the traffic to deliver voice mails in Office 365.įinally, Skye front end servers do not manage SIP connections outside the corporate network, so there should be a way for the Skype front end servers to ask Skype Edge servers to open SIP traffic to Exchange Online UM. This is where HostedVoiceMailPolicy comes to play. Next, is how will Skype initiate traffic to Exchange Online UM Services? There should be a way for Skype servers to know the server name for Exchange Online UM. Till not, we have figured out how Skype servers can route to voice mail in the cloud and to voice mail on premise systems. If it is false, then Skype will start evaluating if the user is provisioned for on premise UM solution by trying to see if he is UM enabled, and what UM dial plan he is member of. If it is true, then Skype knows that the user is provisioned for voice mail in Office 365. It will do that by inspecting the user’s HostedVoiceMail flag from the user AD object. So, when Alice is calling Bob whose mailbox is hosted online, and Bob is not answering his on-premise Skype extension, Skype servers will evaluate for voice mail possibilities. There should be a flag in the user AD object that specifies whether Skype will route the voice mail traffic to on premise Exchange UM or to Exchange UM Online. Moreover, Skype servers should be able to identify that the person to route the call to, has his mailbox on-premise or on Office 365, and thus, route the call accordingly to deliver voice mail capabilities. Saying that, on hybrid model where we have users hosted in Office 365 and others on premise, it is a challenge to have the on-premise Skype servers to route voice mail messages sometimes to Exchange UM on-premise servers, and sometimes to Exchange UM online servers. While if your mailbox is hosted in Exchange Online, then you can only use Exchange Online UM servers. In other words, if your mailbox is hosted in your on-premise Exchange servers, then you can only use the on-premise Exchange UM servers. Instead, they should be using Exchange Online UM and to enable UM features for them on Exchange Online.
Hosted users cannot use Exchange UM on-premise. And when I say hosted user, this means the mailbox is hosted in Office 365. When I talk about Skype servers in this article, I mean the on-premise Skype servers and not Skype Online. Skype will then contact Office 365 UM servers, and route the call there, so that Alice can hear Bob’s voice mail greeting, and then record a voice message, that will be stored on Bob Office 365 mailbox.
The ideal scenario, is that Alice is calling Bob and Bob is not answering. The challenge is how would Skype know how and where to route the call if Bob did not answer, and a voice mail to be recorded? She is trying to call Bob on his Skype extension, since he is enabled for on-premise Skype, while his mailbox is hosted in Office 365. Office 365 mailbox users should use Exchange Online UM features and should be enabled for UM there.Īs you can see in the below figure, Alice is either a Skype user or an external caller. On-premise Exchange UM servers cannot serve users who are hosted in Office 365. The challenge is how the on-premise Skype for Business servers will route the call to Exchange Online (Office 365) and allow the caller to record a voice mail message that is stored on the hosted mailbox (in Office 365). The case is when someone is calling a hosted mailbox user (user with mailbox in Office 365) using on premise Skype for Business infrastructure, and voice mail is to be invoked. To continue reading this article, I assume you know what Exchange UM is, little background about Exchange UM architecture and Exchange UM dial plans, and how Exchange UM voice mail works.
Hybrid means the user is using on premise Skype for Business. Hosted voice mail means voice mail in the cloud (Office 365) because the user’s mailbox is there. This article Explains how hosted voice mail works in hybrid environment.