1. Broadcast Messaging
Unity 4.0(5)

2. What is a Broadcast Message?
Goes to All Subscribers
Heard before everything else
No FF or Skip Ahead
Must Acknowledge message to continue
Sent by Admins for:
Welcome to Initech
Inclement Weather
System is Down
Etc.

3. Implementation of the Single Server soln.
Broadcast messages are stored as wave files on the Unity server. Stored in the same directory as the greetings, voice names etc.
Each broadcast message has an entry in the BroadcastMessage table. This table has details on which wave file has this broadcast message, start and end time for the message.
Each Unity subscriber on the Unity server has an entry into the BroadcastMessageRecipient. This table is used to store the relationship between a broadcast message and a subscriber. A flag on the table denotes whether the subscriber has read the message or not.

4. How does the data look on the server?

5. Benefits of the implementation
Message Store Agnostic
Exchange, Domino, UMSS, we don’t care
Message Store Status Agnostic
UMR mode? No problem!
Easy to add Reporting Capabilities
A SQL query shows which subs have listened to which Msg

6. Multi-Server solution
A little more complicated
To transport the message:
Unity has a mailbox for incoming Broadcasts (Alias is UBMS_<server name>)
Conversation sends the message to all Unity Servers
Message is checked for special properties and a hash
New process (CsBMsgConnector) watches that mailbox and turns incoming messages into Single Server broadcasts
CUE integration:
We can send to and receive from CUE via VPIM
New X-Headers
IVC and other changes to handle this

7. Additional Stuff
Broadcast messages that are stored on a server can be updated. If the message is not yet active, you can change he recording or the start and end date and time. If it is active, you can change the end date and time.
Broadcast messages do not turn on MWI on the phones.
There are some cool settings for the backend behavior of this feature. These can be set using the Advanced settings tool. Look under the Conversation – System Broadcast xxxx settings.