Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for communicating information about transcription progress from a unified messaging (UM) server to a UM client. In one embodiment, the transcription progress describes speech to text transcription of speech messages such as voicemail. The UM server authenticates and establishes a session with a UM client, then receives a get message list request from a UM client as of a first time, responds to the get message list request with a view of a state of messages and available transcriptions for transcribable messages in a list of messages associated with the get message list call at the first time, and, at a second time subsequent to the first time, transmits to the UM client a notification that provides an indication of progress for at least one transcription not yet complete in the list of messages. The messages can include video.