Pro-active features for telephony

• US 20030108173A1
• Filed: 12/05/2002
• Published: 06/12/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Mitel Networks Corporation
• Original Assignee: Mitel Knowledge Corporation (Mitel Networks Corporation)
• Inventors: Gray, Thomas
• Granted Patent: US 7,292,685 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/201.02
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/2044 Group features, e.g. closed user group
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42093 Notifying the calling party of information on the called or connected party
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42314 in private branch exchanges
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42365 Presence services providing information on the willingness to communicate or the ability to communicate in terms of media capability or network connectivity
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42374 where the information is provided to a monitoring entity such as a potential calling party or a call processing server
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/56 Arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities video conference systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation

Abstract

A system is provided for pro-actively suggesting communication features to users, comprising a tuple space for facilitating collaboration among software agents, a plurality of device agents for controlling operation of associated communication devices for respective ones of the users, and a plurality of user agents representing a plurality of users, each of the user agents (i) facilitating creation, by a user desirous of communicating, of groups of users to be communicated with, (ii) poking tuples to the tuple space indicative of each user'"'"'s availability for communication; (iii) peeking anti-tuples to the tuple space for eliciting communication availability of respective ones of the users in the groups of users to be communicated with and in response causing associated device agents to display via respective ones of the devices the aforementioned availability to the user desirous of communicating, and to effect communication between the user desirous of communicating and a selected one of the respective users who is indicated as being available for communication.

Claims

1. A system for pro-actively suggesting communication features to users, comprising:

a tuple space for facilitating collaboration among software agents;

a plurality of device agents for controlling operation of associated communication devices for respective ones of said users; and

a plurality of user agents representing a plurality of users, each of said user agents (i) facilitating creation, by a user desirous of communicating, of groups of users to be communicated with, (ii) poking tuples to said tuple space indicative of each user'"'"'s availability for communication;

(iii) peeking anti-tuples to said tuple space for eliciting communication availability of respective ones of said users in said groups of users to be communicated with and in response causing associated device agents to display via respective ones of said devices said availability to said user desirous of communicating, and to effect communication between said user desirous of communicating and a selected one of said respective users who is indicated as being available for communication.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said associated device agents cause said respective devices to display a list of said respective ones of said users, an indicator of availability associated with each of said respective ones of said users, and a button associated with each of said respective ones of said users for initiating communication between said user desirous of communicating and said selected one of said respective ones of said users.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein each of said user agents automatically selects one of said user groups in connection with which said tuple space as peeked with said anti-tuples based on information relating to the current activities of the user desirous of communicating.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein said information is derived from one or more sources including at least one of location, computer files in use, project being worked on, and information in an electronic calendar of the user desirous of communicating.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein said user agent associates said information with a project name field in said group.

6. A method of pro-actively presenting communication features to users, comprising:

facilitating creation by an associated user of groups of other ones of said users to communicate with;

posting tuples to said tuple space indicative of user availability for communication;

peeking anti-tuples to said tuple space for eliciting said user availability for a selected one of said groups and in response causing said device agents to display said availability via associated ones of said devices and to effect communication between said associated user and a selected one of the available users from the selected group.