Anyone ever used the Unified Messaging in Exchange 2013 or 2010?

I'm getting curious about Microsoft's Unified Messaging, which I believe was formerly called Lync Server, and is now included in Exchange Server.

I'm sure the overall grand design of the thing is all-encompassing, meshing VoIP phones, other PBXs, fax machines and instant messaging on the local network, and probably PRI interfaces connected to the public phone network as well. I have none of that stuff available to me right now. I just want to get started trying out some of the more basic features and have suffered from information overload every time trying to figure out where to begin.

I've worked with VoIP phone systems before, specifically Asterisk a few years ago. I had it sending email to a user whenever they got a new voicemail, they could click the attachment and listen to it. Really nice, but administering it was a nightmare of editing configuration text files, restarting services and rebooting phones, and making test calls to see if something worked as desired.

I'm thinking, if I could connect a modem to an Exchange server, and get it to answer when the phone rings, maybe it could be a pretty nice voicemail system that would email me when I get a phone call. I know it does voicemail but I don't know how or with what equipment. I also know it can do a lot more than that, but if I could make it do that one simple thing I think I would be well on the way to gaining a new area of expertise.

I need a little advice/coaching from someone who has done it before. What can you reasonably expect it to do, what kind of equipment do I need to buy in order to try it out, that sort of thing.