Now you can use your company's existing IMAP-compatible email server to store your voicemail! Give your users the convenience and ease of accessing their voicemail messages, complete with Caller ID information, right inside their email inbox! This has the added benefit of unifying storage of voicemail and email, making backups of data easier AND it alleviates storage needs on your AWS FreePBX instance. Your users will be bound by the same email storage quota for their voicemail messages and allow them an easier interface for managing messages. They can even organize their voicemail messages into folders just like their emails! This will allow your users to be more productive with more information at their fingertips in an instant, all from an interface they are already comfortable with. Now, before we get started, there are several VERY IMPORTANT things you must know:
Switching VoiceMail Storage locations is an "all-or-nothing" process. All mailboxes must use EITHER LOCAL OR IMAP storage. You simply CANNOT have some mailboxes stored locally and some on your IMAP server
You may have to supply the email PASSWORDS for every one of your voicemail users IF your email server doesn't support direct IMAP access to all user folders from a "postmaster" level account
There is NO method available to migrate EXISTING voicemails and greetings between Local and IMAP storage. The methods used to store information in each location is different. When you switch from Local to IMAP, users lose access to their locally stored greetings and voicemails, but the old files will still exist in local storage (/var/spool/asterisk/voicemail). When you switch from IMAP to Local, users will still see the old IMAP folders with the old greetings and voicemails in their email. The switching process does NOT delete existing data from either location. As a result, if you switch a server between locations after it has been in production a while, you will have to clean out the old storage location yourself
When using Voicemail in IMAP storage mode, you CANNOT use S3 Sync or Auto File Deletion services for Voicemail Messages. S3 Sync will still sync Voicemail Greetings if you elect to have those remain on Local storage
PREREQUISITES:
SSH Console access to your instance and basic knowledge of SmartUpgrade (More information here: https://twm.tips/su
An IMAP enabled email server or hosted email service
Username(s)\Password(s) for either:
a "postmaster" account with read/write access to all user folders (you'll still need the email usernames for your users); or
each of your users who will be using voicemail
An understanding of how your email server handles IMAP folders