Voice messaging systems that enable users to send and retrieve voice mail messages are known in the communication arts. In a typical prior art voice messaging system a telephone is connected to a private branch exchange (PBX) that may utilize a notification mechanism, such as a message waiting indicator light, to notify a message recipient that a new message is waiting for them. Many wireless telephone communication systems also provide a Short Message Services (SMS) feature that allows users to send and/or receive short text messages. Today, many modern communication systems provide messaging services via packet-based networks, i.e., those that operate in accordance with the Internet Protocol (IP). A unified messaging (UM) system handles voice, facsimile, regular text messages, and computer-readable documents as objects in a single mailbox that a user can access either with a regular email client, or by telephone. A UM system typically connects to a PBX to provide automated attendant, audiotext, and voice mail services to subscribers or users. For instance, a personal computer (PC) user with multimedia capabilities typically can open and playback voice messages, either as speech or text. Unified messaging is therefore particularly convenient for mobile business users because it allows them to reach colleagues and customers through a PC or telephone device, whichever happens to be available.
There are times when a caller connected to a messaging system via a voice-only channel leaves a voicemail, but also would like to attach media content such as electronic mail (email), Web pages, financial data, documents, and/or video attachments to the voicemail message. But due to the limitations of existing UM and telephony systems users are unable to attach additional rich media content (e.g., documents, media clips, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), etc.) to a unified message that is left as a voicemail.