Original Called Number Vs Last Redirect Number

Today I did a bit of work with CCME and Unity Express again, i always semi-enjoy this work as its such a powerful product for small businesses.

However, One thing that has always annoyed me is the world of diffirence between the way CCME does things and the way you do them in full blown communications manager (see paging for an example.)

This also applies for Unity and Unity Express too.

One of the major behavioural diffirences between Unity and Unity express is the way the mailbox is selected when multiple forwards are involved:

For example, in Call Manager and Cisco unity

If User A forwards to User B, who in turn forwards to voicemail, if someone calls user A, they forward to user B and then to voicemail, but are placed into the USER A's voicemail box (original called-number forwarding.)

This is not the default behaviour on unity express, in unity express the last redirected party is the voicemail box used, so in this example that would be user B.

This seems counter intuitive to me, if you call user A, you want to reach HIS mailbox if no one answers.

So, how do you fix it?

Easy:

Step 1.
Put this line of config into your cisco unity express system:

voicemail mailbox-selection original-called

Depending on your version of CCME/Unity, this in and of itself may be enough, however, in later versions of CCM you need to add this step in:

Step 2.
Go to the dial-peer on the Cisco Call Manager Express router and find the dial-peer that points to the unity express module, go ahead and make sure you enter this line of configuration
"mailbox-select orig-called-number"

Walla! Done

I hope this helps someone out there who had this issue.