Voice Profile for Internet Mail BOF (vpim) Monday, November 8 at 1300-1500 =============================== CHAIR: Glenn Parsons DESCRIPTION: 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 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.