Internet Voice Messaging (IVM)
RFC 4239
Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(November 2005; No errata)
Was draft-ietf-vpim-ivm (vpim WG)
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Authors | Stuart McRae , Glenn Parsons | ||
Last updated | 2018-12-20 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 4239 (Proposed Standard) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Scott Hollenbeck | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Group S. McRae Request for Comments: 4239 IBM Category: Standards Track G. Parsons Nortel Networks November 2005 Internet Voice Messaging (IVM) Status of This Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). Abstract This document describes the carriage of voicemail messages over Internet mail as part of a unified messaging infrastructure. The Internet Voice Messaging (IVM) concept described in this document is not a successor format to VPIM v2 (Voice Profile for Internet Mail Version 2), but rather an alternative specification for a different application. 1. Introduction For some forms of communication, people prefer to communicate using their voices rather than typing. By permitting voicemail to be implemented in an interoperable way on top of Internet Mail, voice messaging and electronic mail no longer need to remain in separate, isolated worlds, and users will be able to choose the most appropriate form of communication. This will also enable new types of devices, without keyboards, to be used to participate in electronic messaging when mobile, in a hostile environment, or in spite of disabilities. There exist unified messaging systems that will transmit voicemail messages over the Internet using SMTP/MIME, but these systems suffer from a lack of interoperability because various aspects of such a message have not hitherto been standardized. In addition, voicemail systems can now conform to the Voice Profile for Internet Messaging McRae & Parsons Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 4239 Internet Voice Messaging November 2005 (VPIM v2 as defined in RFC 2421 [VPIMV2] and revised in RFC 3801, Draft Standard [VPIMV2R2]) when forwarding messages to remote voicemail systems. VPIM v2 was designed to allow two voicemail systems to exchange messages, not to allow a voicemail system to interoperate with a desktop e-mail client. It is often not reasonable to expect a VPIM v2 message to be usable by an e-mail recipient. The result is messages that cannot be processed by the recipient (e.g., because of the encoding used), or look ugly to the user. This document therefore proposes a standard mechanism for representing a voicemail message within SMTP/MIME, and a standard encoding for the audio content, which unified messaging systems and mail clients MUST implement to ensure interoperability. By using a standard SMTP/MIME representation and a widely implemented audio encoding, this will also permit most users of e-mail clients not specifically implementing the standard to still access the voicemail messages. In addition, this document describes features an e-mail client SHOULD implement to allow recipients to display voicemail messages in a more friendly, context-sensitive way to the user, and intelligently provide some of the additional functionality typically found in voicemail systems (such as responding with a voice message instead of e-mail). Finally, how a client MAY provide a level of interoperability with VPIM v2 is explained. It is desirable that unified messaging mail clients also be able to fully interoperate with voicemail servers. This is possible today, providing the client implements VPIM v2 [VPIMV2R2], in addition to this specification, and uses it to construct messages to be sent to a voicemail server. The definition in this document is based on the IVM Requirements document [GOALS]. It references separate work on critical content [CRITICAL] and message context [HINT]. Addressing and directory issues are discussed in related documents [ADDRESS], [VPIMENUM], [SCHEMA]. Further information on VPIM and related activities can be found at http://www.vpim.org or http://www.ema.org/vpim. 2. Conventions Used in This Document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119 [KEYWORDS]. McRae & Parsons Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 4239 Internet Voice Messaging November 2005 3. Message Format Voice messages may be created explicitly by a user (e.g., recording aShow full document text