Cisco Unity Deployment and Solutions Guide

Planning 277

Planning

Naturally, the level of planning that you do for any Unity solution is up to you. In some

cases, you can get by with minimal planning. In other cases, you must do more planning

work, including in-depth analysis and surveys. This is especially true when you migrate

from a very large legacy voice-messaging system to unified messaging.

The planning phase is important enough to merit its own chapter. You will find much greater

planning-specific detail in Chapter 9, “Planning,” and Chapter 11. You must consider some

notable items when planning to design a Unity solution. These issues are included in this

chapter and are expanded upon in greater detail in the aforementioned chapters.

The main emphasis of planning in this chapter is the end-user analysis. It, too, receives

greater coverage in Chapters 9 and 11 (which should indicate how important it is in the

process), but it is summarized here.

End-user analysis enables you to effectively evaluate Unity’s features and functionality, and

to determine how usable it is to your end users. This is an important step, especially if you

want to replace a legacy voice messaging system. The end-user analysis is so important

that, without understanding how end users use your existing voice-messaging system, you

will not be able to determine what is similar and different between the legacy system and

Unity. Consider it a fundamental a requirement for large enterprises to perform an end-user

feature/functionality analysis by comparing the differences between Unity and the existing

legacy voice-messaging system. Performing an end-user usage analysis early when

planning the design and deployment of Unity helps you define the root usage requirements

for Unity deployment. For more information, read Chapter 9.

Now, if Unity does not replace a legacy voice-messaging system, it is not necessary to

determine how a migration might take place. However, it is still important to perform an

end-user feature/function usage analysis. For a new installation, this just means that the

emphasis should be on end-user training during the cutover to Unity.

As explained in Chapter 9, the results of your end-user analysis will help you determine

how Unity should be supported as well as who will support it (or the type of skill set

necessary to support it).

To summarize the planning stage, much emphasis is placed on end-user analysis, which is

why you will see it mentioned throughout Part II, “Deployment.” The planning stage of

design and deployment includes many other steps and issues for you to consider, including

site surveys. With that in mind, it is suitable to proceed with an overview of the remaining

deployment methodology phases in this chapter.