ABSTRACT
Office workers must check many locations for their messages — e-mail inbox, fax machine, office voice mail, cellular voice mail, alphanumeric pager, paper-based mail, and assorted display devices (e.g., Amtel for quick display messages, display boards, overhead paging). According to Ernest Lucieno of BellSouth Corporation, a large portion of the Fortune 1000 workforce carries an average of six devices. Unified messaging (UM) attempts to reduce the user’s burden by combining some of these technologies, at least from the user’s perspective, into a single presentation. Using a common GUI (graphical user interface), users can logically save, retrieve, forward, and convert messages from one format to another. In today’s “mongrel” world of many message technologies, UM has the potential to shorten the learning curve and simplify the user’s communications world. Unified messaging stores and manages messages consistently and displays them in an appropriate context.
