Method and Apparatus for Reconstructing a Communication Session

• US 20090240818A1
• Filed: 12/28/2008
• Published: 09/24/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/18/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avaya Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Nortel Networks Limited (Nortel Networks Corporation)
• Inventors: Hyndman, Arn, Sauriol, Nicholas
• Granted Patent: US 9,392,037 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/228
• 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 67/131 Protocols for games, networked simulations or virtual reality
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/22 Synchronisation circuits
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/301 Management of recordings
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/42221 Conversation recording systems at the subscriber's set H04M1/656

Abstract

Each person to a communication session records their contributions to the communication session. Metadata is maintained for each contribution to identify the time of the contribution and any other useful information to enable the content of the contribution to be accessed at a later point in time. When a portion of the communication session is to be recreated, the people involved in the communication session are requested to provide their contributions for a particular period of time or all contributions associated with a particular topic. Users will then select and forward previously recorded contributions that they are willing to have included in the recreation. By collecting contributions from the individuals involved in the communication session, the intended portion of the communication session may be recreated. Since each person is recording their own contribution to the communication session, no explicit permission is required to record the conversation.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of reconstructing at least a portion of a communication session between a plurality of participants, the method comprising the steps of:

transmitting a request to at least a subset of the plurality of participants to the communication session for recorded participant contributions to the communication session;

receiving at least a subset of the requested recorded participant contributions; and

combining the received recoded participant contributions to reconstruct the portion of the communication session.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein each recorded participant contribution contains audio contributed by that particular participant which has been recorded by that particular participant or under the control of that particular participant during the communication session.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each participant contribution is time-stamped, wherein the request specifies a time range, and wherein the request requests the participants to submit recorded participant contributions to the communication session during the specified time range.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein each participant contribution includes meta-data describing a content of the contribution, wherein the request specifies a topic, and wherein the request requests the participants to submit recorded participant contributions containing content relevant to the topic.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of combining the received recoded participant contributions further comprises adding additional content to create a reconstruction of the portion of the communication session.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the recorded participant contributions are audio files, and wherein the additional content comprises visual information relevant to the participants of the communication session.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of combining the received recoded participant contributions to reconstruct the portion of the communication session comprises creating a file containing all of the contributions or an ordered series of files containing the contributions.

8. A computer-implemented method of participating in a communication session by a user to enable later reconstruction of the communication session;

the method comprising the steps of;

recording, by the user, audio contributions made by the user to the communication session;

selecting, by the user, at least a subset of the audio contributions for inclusion in the reconstruction of the communication session; and

making the subset of the audio contributions available for inclusion in the reconstruction of the communication session.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the communication session is a telephone conference call, wherein the audio contributions comprise files containing recordings of the what the user said during the telephone conference call such that each user only records speech generated by themselves on the telephone conference call.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the audio contributions are recorded by the user locally.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the audio contributions are recorded by the user via a network-based recording service such that the audio contributions are recorded remotely from the user but under the control of the user.

12. The method of claim 9, further comprising adding, by the user, metadata to the recorded audio contributions.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the metadata comprises notes related to the content of the audio contributions.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein each audio contribution is timestamped.

15. The method of claim 9, wherein the step of making the subset of the audio contributions available for inclusion in the reconstruction of the communication session comprises transmitting or causing to be transmitted the selected subset of the audio contributions to a reconstruction process responsible for creation of a communication session reconstruction.

16. The method of claim 9, further comprising the step of recording, by the user, video contributions made by the user to the communication session;

17. A computer-implemented method of enabling a plurality of participants in a communication session to collectively record the communication session, the method comprising the steps of:

recording, by each of the participants to the communication session, the participant'"'"'s respective contributions to the communication session;

selecting, by each of the participants to the communication session, contributions to be include in a collective recoding of the communication session; and

transmitting, by each of the participants to the communication session, the selected contributions to enable a collective recording to be built from the selected contributions.