Voice-mail - Unified Messaging

Unified Messaging

Unified Messaging integrated voice-mail into Microsoft Exchange, the corporate email system made by Microsoft. Unified Messaging had been invented by Roberta Cohen, Kenneth Huber and Deborah Mill at AT&T Bell Labs. The patent for Unified Messaging was received in June, 1989 (Patent number 4,837,798).

Unified Messaging allowed users to access voice-mail and email messages using either the graphical user interface (GUI) on their PC, or using the telephone user interface (TUI). Using a PC, users could see voice-mails and emails mixed together in their email inbox. Voice mails had a little telephone icon next to them and emails had a little envelope icon next to them (see figure below). For voice-mail, they'd see the "header information" (sender, date sent, size, and subject). Users could double-click a voice-mail from their email inbox and hear the message through their PC or a phone next to their desk.

Using any phone in the world, users could listen to voice messages like they normally did, plus have emails read to them (in synthesized voice). Voice messages could be sent using email or telephone addressing schemes, and the data networking infrastructure was used to send messages between locations rather than the public switched telephone network. It wasn't until the early 2000s and the availability of reliable, high capacity email servers, high speed internet connections and PCs with speakers or microphones that Unified Messaging achieved commercial success.