How to export/archive voicemails from 6x?

[mcbsys]

Customer is finally ready to retire their Allworx 6x running 7.4.19.2. Replacing with another brand. I was able to download the IVR and voicemail greeting files via FTP. Can I get the actual voicemails? Through SSH, FTP, extracting from backups, something?

If not and I leave the Allworx on the LAN, can users get voicemail through a web interface? They've never used My Allworx Manager and from my brief research, I don't see voicemail access as a feature.

Thanks for all tips and suggestions!

[wshrader]

That's quite impressive you were able to use FTP to get the greetings. I do not know if it's possible on v7.4 or how exactly to do it, but you should be able to use POP3 to get the voice mail. The Allworx can function as an E-mail server. I have never done this nor ever encountered one that was actively using this function, however.

[mcbsys]

Thanks. I've seen references to attaching voicemails to emails, but I assume that works as the voicemails come in. I need to dump 60 or 80 voicemails at once.

Exporting prompts isn't difficult when you get past the odd requirements that you have to click a button in the UI to put the prompts in a folder, then connect via completely open FTP (no username or password) from the LAN side of the PBX. It's Home > Auto Attendants > Manage > Export.

I was helped by one of TCE Company's many articles on Allworx: https://www.tcecompany.com/managing-custom-recordings.html.

The recordings are in raw U-Law format, new to me, but Audacity imported them once I set the Encoding to U-Law. LOTS of detail here: https://info.allworx.com/hubfs/pdfs/allworx_create_server_audio_files.pdf.

Now if I could just get those voicemails. I wonder, if I open the Allworx case, will I find a removable SD card or similar for storage that I could mount elsewhere...

[wshrader]

Thanks. I've seen references to attaching voicemails to emails, but I assume that works as the voicemails come in. I need to dump 60 or 80 voicemails at once.

Exporting prompts isn't difficult when you get past the odd requirements that you have to click a button in the UI to put the prompts in a folder, then connect via completely open FTP (no username or password) from the LAN side of the PBX. It's Home > Auto Attendants > Manage > Export.

I was helped by one of TCE Company's many articles on Allworx: https://www.tcecompany.com/managing-custom-recordings.html.

The recordings are in raw U-Law format, new to me, but Audacity imported them once I set the Encoding to U-Law. LOTS of detail here: https://info.allworx.com/hubfs/pdfs/allworx_create_server_audio_files.pdf.

Now if I could just get those voicemails. I wonder, if I open the Allworx case, will I find a removable SD card or similar for storage that I could mount elsewhere...

Sending voicemail via E-mail is totally different. At least on version after 7.7 this is done using an external E-mail server. What I'm saying that the Allworx itself has the capability of acting as a POP3 E-mail server on its own. The theory is that you would use an E-mai client (like Thunderbird) to connect to the individual mailboxes on the Allworx to grab the voicemails. Like I said, I've never done this nor even tried but their technical support told me about this a long time ago.

[mcbsys]

Ah okay. That kind of makes sense. So there should be an email waiting for each voicemail and I could POP those emails from the Allworx email server. It'd be interesting to try--I wonder if it automatically creates emails for each mailbox, or if it has to be enabled.

For now I have left one Allworx phone connected to the LAN side of the Allworx, and given the managers a list of which users have voicemails that they haven't listened to. One VM box is full (50 messages) but that position was eliminated years ago, so they may not even want those. If they do, I may give the POP thing a try--thanks for the idea!

Any idea what format the OfficeSafe backup files are stored in? So far I was able to decompress a 78MB .bck file using 7-Zip (it says it was gzip and that it had some extra data). This gives me a 96MB file with lots of readable text, but I haven't found the trick for separating it into files. It doesn't seem to be a .tar or other format that WinZip or 7-Zip recognizes.

[wshrader]

Ah okay. That kind of makes sense. So there should be an email waiting for each voicemail and I could POP those emails from the Allworx email server. It'd be interesting to try--I wonder if it automatically creates emails for each mailbox, or if it has to be enabled.

For now I have left one Allworx phone connected to the LAN side of the Allworx, and given the managers a list of which users have voicemails that they haven't listened to. One VM box is full (50 messages) but that position was eliminated years ago, so they may not even want those. If they do, I may give the POP thing a try--thanks for the idea!

Any idea what format the OfficeSafe backup files are stored in? So far I was able to decompress a 78MB .bck file using 7-Zip (it says it was gzip and that it had some extra data). This gives me a 96MB file with lots of readable text, but I haven't found the trick for separating it into files. It doesn't seem to be a .tar or other format that WinZip or 7-Zip recognizes.

I don't know any technical details about the backup file. IMHO it's not worth the effort to mess with that. I think you're better off as you are doing, telling the customer to actuallly listen to all the messages themsevles. Whenever this becomes an issue I simply tell them to do this or they will lose everything and leave it up to them to determine how badly they want to make the effort to clear out each user's voicemail themselves.
If you figure out how to parse the OfficeSafe backup, I would be very interested in the process.

[mcbsys]

> IMHO it's not worth the effort to mess with that.

I agree, and the customer seems okay with it. The full mailbox is almost 10 years old so they're okay just deleting those 50 messages. That doesn't leave much to go through.

I like solving puzzles and figuring out the backup file would have been fun, but time to move on.

Thanks a million for your practical and moral support over the last year or so! I owe you a beer or three. Allworx was a decent system for this company for several years, but this trapped voicemail issue reinforces why I don't like closed systems. I've installed a Grandstream UCM6302 and a bunch of GXP2170 phones. They seem satisfied.