You’ve Got Mail, and it’s all in one Mailbox*

Consider for a moment the number of messaging devices you have to access in a day. You check your PC for e-mail. You punch buttons on your phone to check your voice mail. You visit the fax machine several times to see if that urgent confidential fax has arrived. Just sending and retrieving different messages from different systems takes up much of your time and energy.

Today, the form that a message takes has become more critical than its content. Simply because the form may determine if the content is accessible. When happens if you are miles away from a fax machine? Or if you are travelling and the fax keeps chasing you from city to city - revealing its confidential contents to all and sundry? And what if an important e-mail arrives when you are out of the office and don't have a laptop? How can you possibly maintain vital communication given these constraints?

Technology from Lucent finally has the solution. With new "unified messaging", which works on almost any PBX, you can now bring voice and fax messages into a single mailbox along with e-mail messages and other documents. And you can access all the messages through any convenient communication device, including a telephone, PC or fax machine.

Despite its revolutionary approach, the concept of "unified messaging" is remarkably simple. Give as many employees as you choose a single mailbox. This mailbox is similar to the separate voice mail and e-mail box they are using today, except there is only one unified box. And all voice, fax, e-mail and data messages are stored in this. You can view them, listen to them, store or retrieve them on your computer. You can also do it through any telephone - it requires neither software nor special connections. To check your mail from a phone, call your mailbox. You will receive a message like this one: You have 3 new voice mails, 6 new e-mails, 1 new e-mails, 1 new fax and 37 saves messages. You can listen to voice or even e-mail messages over the phone.

You can also log into your computer over the phone and respond to these messages; you can store, delete or print them; you can even request the machine to fax an e-mail to you. And if you are using your PC, you'll find all the relevant icons (fax, voice, e-mail) on a single page. To communicate, simply click them.

In fact you can view, listen to, store or retrieve a message by PC or telephone regardless of the form in which they were created. An e-mail message, for example, can be heard from your mobile phone as a result of a unique media conversion software. It can also be converted to fax. As for voice mail, it's as easy as sending an e-mail, record the message on your multimedia PC (or the phone), address it to one or more people and simply click to send. Or respond to voice messages at the touch of a button. You can also mix different media, for greater effectiveness, with the click of a mouse: for example, record a voice message and send it along with a fax.

Benefits of a single mailbox

• Headers of the voice, fax and e-mail messages waiting for your attention are all listed on a single window in your PC.Record of a voice message on a multimedia PC or phone, click the icon on the PC and send the message to as many people as you like.
• Fax messages remain confidential because they remain stored in your mailbox.
• Listen to your email over the phone. Or have it faxed to you.
• Using a PC, telephone or pager, find out what messages are waiting for you.
• The centralised administration simplifies the task of backing up message data.
• Access a single enterprise-wide directory.
• All mailboxes are password protected, with the option of defining additional levels of security.
• The system dynamically conforms to your enterprise and needs at any given point in time.

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* TATA Telecom Update, Issue 5, May 1999