E-mail, voice mail to cross wires

Students no longer have an excuse for not checking their e-mail. \nThis fall the campus voice mail service extended its unified messaging service to students who live on campus, allowing them to retrieve their e-mail through voice mail when they do not have access to a computer and vice versa.\nLast year the campus voice mail service was introduced to faculty and staff who have on-campus offices.\nThe service is an advanced system that allows users to store voice messages in their mailbox in addition to their e-mail, said Paul Clegg, manager of voice operations for University Information Technology Services in Indianapolis.\n"With (unified messaging service), you can use your e-mail client to access these messages, or you can use your phone," Clegg said.\nStudents can create a unified messaging voice mail account by visiting the service's Web site at http://umsweb.iu.edu/ and signing up with their IU username. \nFreshman Carlos Juarez, who lives in Mason Hall Apartments, said he's not sure this is a practical service.\n"This service can only be used with on-campus phones," Juarez said. "It's really not useful if you're out of your dorm and on the go (because) you don't have access to your computer or your campus phone. If it were available from your cell phone, it might be more useful."\nClegg said unified messaging offers additional applications that conventional voice mail does not.\nSome of these features include setting phone calls to designated phone numbers, forwarding specific callers to designated phone numbers, making sure certain users are not disturbed by certain callers by immediately redirecting those calls to voice mail, and setting a text greeting for specific callers. \n"Most people like the ability to see they have received a voice mail and listen to it through their e-mail," Clegg said. "We currently have 2,842 users on the system and average around 1,800 calls per day."\nSue Workman, director of user support at IU, said there is no additional fee for this service. \n"There is a fee equal to the old voice mail for faculty, staff," she said. "It is included in the services for those in campus housing."\nWorkman doesn't expect everyone to use voice mail as a primary way to check e-mail, but she said she thinks using e-mail to check voice mail will be more of a "norm." \nClegg said he thinks students will benefit from being able to check their e-mail through voice mail.\n"It is a great way to get quick access to e-mail or check your calendar if you do not have access to a computer," he said. "The system has a text to speech engine that will read your e-mail to you, but it's not something you would want to do on a regular basis"