Virtual meeting attendee

• US 10,230,774 B2
• Filed: 05/19/2016
• Issued: 03/12/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 05/19/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Saez, William Nain
• Primary Examiner(s): Addy, Thjuan K
• Application Number:
  US15/159,677
• Publication Number:
  US 20170339199A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,027 Days
• Field of Search: 37920201, 37920301, 37920401, 37920101, 379 8801
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1095 Meeting or appointment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4015 where at least one of the additional parallel sessions is real time or time sensitive, e.g. white board sharing, collaboration or spawning of a subconference
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/03 Constructional features of telephone transmitters or receivers, e.g. telephone hand-sets
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/405 involving speaker-dependent recognition adaptation to speaker for speech recognition G10L15/07
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/52 including functional features of a camera constructional features concerning the integration of cameras in portable phones H04M1/0264
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/147 Communication arrangements, e.g. identifying the communication as a video-communication, intermediate storage of the signals selecting H04Q

Abstract

A virtual meeting attendee includes a scheduling interface operatively coupled to a computerized meeting platform and configured to enable the virtual meeting attendee to be scheduled into meetings as a participant by users of the computerized meeting platform. The virtual meeting attendee also includes a content preparation machine configured, when the meeting attendee has been scheduled into a meeting as a participant, to receive meeting-associated content from computing devices of other participants scheduled into the meeting and output the meeting-associated content for display via a display device associated with the virtual meeting attendee.

Claims

1. A virtual meeting attendee, comprising:

a scheduling interface operatively coupled to a computerized meeting platform and configured to enable the virtual meeting attendee to be scheduled into meetings as a computerized, non-human participant by human users of the computerized meeting platform; and

a content preparation machine configured, when the virtual meeting attendee has been scheduled into a meeting as a computerized, non-human participant, to (i) receive meeting-associated content from computing devices of human participants scheduled into the meeting and (ii) output the meeting-associated content for display via a display device associated with the virtual meeting attendee.

2. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, further comprising an attendance tracking component configured to identify human participants of the meeting and track attendance of the identified human participants.

3. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 2, where the attendance tracking component comprises one or more of a microphone for identifying human participants via voice recognition, a camera for identifying human participants, and a device recognition component configured to detect the presence of computing devices associated with human meeting participants in a physical space associated with the virtual meeting attendee.

4. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where the computerized meeting platform provides an indication to users of the computerized meeting platform that a physical space is associated with the virtual meeting attendee.

5. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where scheduling the virtual meeting attendee into a meeting causes an indication within the computerized meeting platform that a physical space associated with the virtual meeting attendee is reserved for the meeting.

6. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where responsive to the virtual meeting attendee being scheduled into a meeting occurring during a scheduled meeting time period, the virtual meeting attendee is configured so that it is not schedulable into other meetings that overlap with the scheduled meeting time period.

7. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where the virtual meeting attendee provides an indication to human meeting participants that it provides meeting-associated content display capabilities.

8. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where the virtual meeting is configured to provide instructions to human meeting participants describing how to send meeting-associated content to the virtual meeting attendee for display.

9. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where the content preparation machine is configured to only output meeting-associated content that has been received from computing devices of human participants of a same meeting as the meeting that the virtual meeting attendee is scheduled into.

10. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where the meeting includes a plurality of human participants, one or more human participants of the plurality being select human participants, the virtual meeting attendee being configured to output meeting-associated content from select human participants differently than other human participants of the plurality.

11. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where the virtual meeting attendee is a hardware device which may be operatively coupled with a plurality of different display devices.

12. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 1, where the virtual meeting attendee is included in a same housing as the display device.

13. A virtual meeting attendee, comprising:

a logic machine; and

a storage machine holding instructions executable by the logic machine, the instructions including;

instructions to communicate with a computerized meeting platform and receive requests from human users of the computerized meeting platform to schedule the virtual meeting attendee into meetings as a computerized, non-human participant;

instructions to, when the virtual meeting attendee has been scheduled into a meeting as a computerized, non-human participant, receive meeting-associated content from computing devices of human participants scheduled into the meeting; and

instructions to output the meeting-associated content for display via a display device associated with the virtual meeting attendee.

14. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 13, the instructions further including instructions to identify human participants of the meeting and track attendance of the identified human participants.

15. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 13, where scheduling the virtual meeting attendee into a meeting causes an indication within the computerized meeting platform that a physical space associated with the virtual meeting attendee is reserved for the meeting.

16. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 13, where responsive to the virtual meeting attendee being scheduled into a meeting occurring during a scheduled meeting time period, the virtual meeting attendee is configured so that it is not schedulable into other meetings that overlap with the scheduled meeting time period.

17. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 13, where the virtual meeting attendee provides an indication to human meeting participants that it provides meeting-associated content display capabilities.

18. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 13, where the virtual meeting attendee is configured so that only meeting-associated content that has been received from computing devices of human participants of a same meeting as the meeting that the virtual meeting attendee is scheduled into is output for display.

19. The virtual meeting attendee of claim 13, where the virtual meeting attendee is a hardware device which may be operatively coupled with a plurality of different display devices.

20. A virtual meeting attendee, comprising:

a scheduling interface operatively coupled to a computerized meeting platform and configured to enable the virtual meeting attendee to be scheduled into meetings as a computerized, non-human participant by human users of the computerized meeting platform;

an attendance tracking component configured to identify human participants of the meeting and track attendance of the identified human participants;

a content preparation machine configured, when the virtual meeting attendee has been scheduled into a meeting as a computerized, non-human participant, to (i) receive meeting-associated content from computing devices of human participants scheduled into the meeting and (ii) output the meeting-associated content for display via a display device associated with the virtual meeting attendee, the virtual meeting attendee being removably affixable to and usable with a plurality of different display devices;

where scheduling the virtual meeting attendee into a meeting causes an indication within the computerized meeting platform that a physical space associated with the virtual meeting attendee is reserved for the meeting; and

where responsive to the virtual meeting attendee being scheduled into a meeting occurring during a scheduled meeting time period, the virtual meeting attendee is configured so that it is not schedulable into other meetings that overlap with the scheduled meeting time period.