MANAGING REAL TIME MEETING ROOM STATUS

• US 20090265280A1
• Filed: 04/18/2008
• Published: 10/22/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/18/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ramamoorthy, Vivek, Sathananthan, Shiran, Sather, Eric, Venkataraman, Murali, Taneja, Puneet, Kommineni, Anil, Egger, Paul
• Granted Patent: US 8,352,296 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/80
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/188 Electronic negotiation

Abstract

Presence information within a meeting room is detected and published to users for managing room availability and real time status. Various means such as motion detectors, card readers, log-in mechanisms associated with in-room computers, and the like, are used to detect presence information. Different status indicators are assigned to each room and published through a communication application or hosted service providing useful and real time information to users.

Claims

1. A method to be executed at least in part in a computing device for managing real time meeting room status, the method comprising:

receiving in-room presence information for a meeting room;

retrieving room scheduling information for the meeting room;

determining a real time status of the meeting room based on comparison of the in-room presence information and the room scheduling information; and

publishing the real time status of the meeting room to at least one remote client.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining in-room presence information based on in-room person detection through one of;

a motion detector and a heat sensor.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining in-room presence information based on detection of an identity of a person detection through one of;

a magnetic access card reader, a barcode-based access card reader, a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based access card reader, and a log-in mechanism.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the comparison of the in-room presence information and the room scheduling information includes comparison of a person reserving the meeting room for a meeting and a person currently occupying the meeting room.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the in-room presence information is received from a presence detector in response to one of:

expiration of a predefined period and request from a status management application.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the real time meeting room status includes one of:

“

free”

indicating no meeting is scheduled and no one is present in the meeting room, “

occupied”

indicating the meeting room is not reserved but occupied, “

reserved”

indicating the meeting room is reserved for a meeting but not being used currently, “

in unscheduled meeting”

indicating the meeting room is being used by someone other than a person who reserved the room for a meeting, and “

in scheduled meeting”

indicating the meeting room is being used by people who reserved it for a meeting.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein publishing the real time meeting room status to the at least one remote client includes transmitting the real time meeting room status to a client communication application over a network in response to one of:

a request from the client communication application and a subscription of a user of the client communication application to a presence of the conference room.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein publishing the real time meeting room status to the at least one remote client includes providing the real time meeting room status through a user interface of a web-based collaboration service.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein publishing the real time meeting room status to the at least one remote client includes transmitting the real time meeting room status in association with a meeting room alias to a client scheduling application over a network in response to one of:

a request from the client scheduling application and a subscription of a user of the client scheduling application to a presence of the conference room.

10. A system for managing real time meeting room status, the system comprising:

a presence detector for detecting presence of at least one person in a meeting room;

a calendaring application for facilitating reservation of the meeting room by users;

a status management application for receiving in-room presence information from the presence detector, retrieving room scheduling information from the calendaring application, determining an availability status of the meeting room based on comparison of the in-room presence information and the room scheduling information, and publishing the availability status indicator for the meeting room; and

a communication application for receiving the published availability status indicator and presenting the availability status indicator to a user.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the presence detector includes one from a set of:

at least one motion detector, a magnetic access card reader, a barcode-based access card reader, an RFID based access card reader, and a log-in mechanism.

12. The system of claim 11, further comprising:

a controller for receiving detected presence information from the presence detector and making it available for the status management application.

13. The system of claim 10, wherein the status management application is executed in one of:

a server coupled through a network to the presence detector and an in-room PC.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the presence detector is an integral part of the in-room PC.

15. The system of claim 10, wherein the communication application is configured to present the availability status indicator to a user by representing the meeting room with an assigned alias and enabling the user to subscribe to the meeting room'"'"'s presence through the assigned alias.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the communication application is further configured to enable a user interface associated with one of a web-based service and a client communication application to present the availability status indicator in response to resolving the assigned alias for the meeting room.

17. The system of claim 10, wherein the availability status indicator includes information associated with whether a person currently occupying the meeting room is indeed the person who reserved the meeting room for a meeting.

18. A computer-readable storage medium with instructions stored thereon for managing real time status of a meeting room, the instructions comprising:

receiving a subscription from a user to a presence of the meeting room;

determining a meeting room occupation status by detecting one of presence and absence of person in the meeting room;

providing the meeting occupation status to a status management application;

retrieving meeting room reservation status from a calendaring application;

determining the real time status of the meeting room based on comparing the meeting occupation status with the meeting room reservation status;

publishing the real time status of the meeting room to the subscribing user through one of a communication application user interface and a collaboration application user interface.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the instructions further comprise:

presenting the real time status of the meeting room to the subscribing user in association with a meeting request through the communication application user interface in response to an alias assigned to the meeting room being input by the user.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein instructions further comprise:

presenting the real time status of the meeting room to the subscribing user in association with a web-based collaboration application user interface through a subscribed resources list.