Unified Messaging Pal

Cisco Unified Communications (CallManager) question...?

I've recently been tasked to find out if our CallManager system could support sending paging messages to a building or certain zones (instead of installing an analog pager system). I found out that Cisco Unified CallManager Express has a paging function but the full CallManager does not. I'm currently running version 6. Does anybody know if this functionality will be included in patches/upgrades? I know there are some third party vendors out there that have some products...it seems kind of silly though that I'd need to go out and buy a whole new box and learn how to integrate it with the CallManager when it seems that just having a unicast voice stream capability would be fairly easy for Cisco to have included. Does anybody, any Cisco employees here? know why it was not included? Does anybody here have any reviews of the following two systems? http://www.berbee.com/public/berbeesoftware/InformaCast.aspx http://www.ipcelerate.com/assets/docs/IPcelerate_ER.pdf

Public Comments

1. Call Manager does support paging, but I haven't a clue as to how to set it up. I would contact Cisco and open a TAC case if you have support. Good luck.
2. The basic answer is "it depends". There are 2 types of paging. One type pages through the phone sets. All versions of Call Manager support this functionality. The other type of paging is via a "stand-alone" or "proprietary" paging system. This type can be added to the full call manager but it is an add-on. The phone-set paging can be set to page specific sets / (zones). The biggest down-side to paging this way is that it interrupts the active voice call in progress to activate the page. This is annoying to say the least. Your best bet is the add-on type. I use and recommend ValCom. As to why? It's Cisco! They do what they want!