Enable an informational announcement for Outlook Voice Access users in Exchange Server

Applies to: Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Server 2016

You can enable an informational announcement on a Unified Messaging (UM) dial plan. Informational announcements are used for general announcements that change more frequently than the welcome greeting does, or for announcements that are required by corporate compliance policies.

By default, callers, including Outlook Voice Access users who dial in to an Outlook Voice Access number that's been configured, don't hear an informational announcement. If you want one to be played, you must create a .wav or .wma file to use for the informational announcement after you create a UM dial plan, and then enable the informational announcement on the dial plan.

When it's important that the whole informational announcement is heard, you can configure the announcement to be uninterruptible. This prevents a caller from pressing a key or speaking a command to interrupt and stop the announcement.

For more information about the menu options that are available for Outlook Voice Access users, see the Quick Reference Guide for Outlook Voice Access, which is available from the Microsoft Download Center.

For additional management tasks related to UM dial plans, see UM dial plan procedures in Exchange Server.

What do you need to know before you begin?

Tip

Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at Exchange Server.

Use the EAC to enable an informational announcement

  1. In the EAC, navigate to Unified Messaging > UM dial plans.

  2. In the list view, select the UM dial plan that you want to modify, and then click Edit Edit icon..

  3. On the UM dial plan page, click Configure.

  4. In Outlook Voice Access, under Informational announcement, click Change, and then click Browse to locate the announcement file.

    Important

    The file you use for the informational announcement must be a .wav or .wma file.

  5. After you've located the file, click Open, and then click Save.

Use the Shell to enable an informational announcement

This example enables an informational announcement that uses the informational.wav informational announcement file on a UM dial plan named MyUMDialPlan.

Set-UMDialPlan -Identity MyUMDialPlan -InfoAnnouncementEnabled $true-InfoAnnouncementFilename c:\UMGreetings\informational.wav