Voice Profile for Internet Mail
charter-ietf-vpim-01

The Voice Profile for Internet Mail (VPIM) Version 2 is currently a
Proposed Standard (RFC 2421) Applicability Statement. It is an
application of Internet Mail originally intended for sending voice
messages between voice messaging systems. As such, VPIM imposes
several restrictions on the message and transport to support the
characteristics of voice messaging. Many voice mail vendors have
implemented systems according to RFC 2421 and are in the process of
deploying these systems around the world. Most vendors have completed
(or are currently involved in) interoperability testing of VPIM
products and have posted their results on the VPIM website. This
working group will promote the advancement of VPIM v2 on the standards
track.

Several minor problems with VPIM v2 have been identified during the
development and testing of products. These problems can easily be
fixed with minor clarifications to the protocol. A revised VPIM v2
(and related protocols as necessary) will be produced to reflect these
clarifications. No protocol changes will be introduced in this update.

Though VPIM uses Internet Mail, its restrictions can be inconvenient
when sending and receiving messages from traditional desktop email
clients. As a result, there is interest in loosening the restrictions
of VPIM in a new version and make it the voice component of a unified
messaging protocol suite. This would make it easier for desktop
clients to send, receive, and forward voice messages while maintaining
support for the characteristics of a voice message.

The primary goal of Version 3 is to support interoperability with
deployed desktop email clients. A secondary goal is to specify
interoperability with Version 2. The result is that the semantics of a
voice or fax message within an email message can be interpreted at as
many clients as possible.

An initial proposal for VPIM v3 (also known as Internet Voice Mail
(IVM)) is currently documented in several Internet Drafts (see
draft-ema-vpimv3-*): VPIM v3 Goals, VPIM v3 Unified Messaging (Primary
Content), VPIM Addressing and VPIM v3 Specification. As well, several
supporting protocol extensions may need to be worked in this group or
in collaboration with other groups. These are: IMAP voice extensions,
voice directory profiles, content negotiation details for voice and
partial non-delivery notifications.

The working group will initially focus on agreement of the goals and
then define a set of protocol documents to address the media,
addressing, and handling semantics. Finally, VPIM v2 - v3 Interworking
will be documented separately if needed.

Collaboration

The voice mail vendors and several email vendors have been meeting in
the VPIM work group at the Electronic Messaging Association (EMA) for
several years. This team produced VPIM v1 (RFC 1911) and VPIM v2 (RFC
2421). This group meets three times a year in between IETF meetings
and is regularly attended by core VPIM proponents. As a result, there
is benefit to using this venue as an interim meeting.

In addition, the work of this group is related to similar work by the
Internet Fax WG. It is intended that Version 3 will use at least the
Simple Mode of Internet Fax.

As well, other IETF WGs may be interested in proposed voice extensions
to protocols. There may be value in collaborating on some work items.