INTELLIGENT CONTACT MANAGEMENT

• US 20100062753A1
• Filed: 09/05/2008
• Published: 03/11/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/05/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Sundling, Rebecca, Chen, Liang, Vronay, David, Wen, Yandong
• Granted Patent: US 8,805,450 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/418
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/2746 Sorting, e.g. according to history or frequency of use
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/27475 using interactive graphical means or pictorial representations
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/576 associated with a pictorial or graphical representation
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/724 User interfaces specially adapted for cordless or mobile telephones
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72472 wherein the items are sorted according to specific criteria, e.g. frequency of use
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/60 logging of communication history, e.g. outgoing or incoming calls, missed calls, messages or URLs logging of telephone numbers H04M1/56, H04M1/57

Abstract

An intelligent contact management technique that automatically manages contacts on a communication device such as a mobile phone is described. The intelligent management technique can automatically determine and display a user'"'"'s favorite contacts on a display of a mobile device. The technique can also intelligently group contacts based on their contact frequency. It can provide a contact-oriented event notification that notifies a user when a contact event has occurred. The contact-oriented event notification can be associated with a visual representation of an associated contact.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented process for automatically managing contacts for a communication device, comprising:

monitoring and logging the communications of a communication device with one or more contacts;

calculating the communication frequency with each of the one or more contacts using a log of the communications;

automatically creating a prioritized contact grouping comprising the contacts with a higher communication frequency being given greater priority.

2. The computer-implemented process of claim 1, further comprising updating the created prioritized contact grouping when the calculated communication frequency with one or more contacts changes.

3. The computer-implemented process of claim 1, further comprising more prominently displaying the contacts with a greater priority on a display of the communication device.

4. The computer-implemented process of claim 3, further comprising displaying contacts with a greater priority larger on a touch screen display of the communication device.

5. The computer-implemented process of claim 1, further comprising grouping one or more of the contacts by communication frequency into one or more groups.

6. The computer-implemented process of claim 1, further comprising:

monitoring and logging the mode of communications of the communication device with the one or more contacts;

calculating the communication mode frequency with each of the one or more contacts using a log of the mode of communications for each contact;

automatically creating a prioritized communication mode grouping for each contact wherein a communication mode with a higher communication mode frequency is given higher priority.

7. The computer-implemented process of claim 6, further comprising more prominently displaying communication modes with a higher priority.

8. The computer-implemented process of claim 7, further comprising displaying communication modes with a higher priority larger on a touch screen display of the communication device.

9. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 wherein the communication device is a mobile cellular phone.

10. A computer-implemented process for managing the contacts on a mobile communication device, comprising:

entering a value or text into any predefined content field associated with one or more contacts in a contact store on a mobile communication device;

defining the input value or text as a tag associated with each contact of the one or more contacts in the contact store;

automatically creating one or more groupings of the one or more contacts in the contact store based on one or more tags.

11. The computer-implemented process of claim 10, further comprising automatically grouping contacts having the same tag as the same group.

12. The computer-implemented process of claim 10, further comprising:

analyzing the tags for common characteristics; and

automatically grouping contacts with tags having the same characteristics in a same group.

13. The computer-implemented process of claim 10, further comprising displaying the one or more groupings as a graphical representation on the display of the mobile communications device.

14. The computer-implemented process of claim 13, further comprising displaying individual contacts within a grouping on the display of a mobile communications device when the graphical representation of the grouping is selected.

15. The computer-implemented process of claim 10, further comprising a user entering the value or text into any pre-defined content field.

16. The computer-implemented process of claim 10, further comprising extracting the value or text from another application resident on the mobile communication device.

17. A system for managing contacts on a mobile communication device, comprising:

a general purpose computing device;

a computer program comprising program modules executable by the general purpose computing device, wherein the computing device is directed by the program modules of the computer program to,

receive a communication from a contact at a mobile communication device;

associate the communication from the contact with the contact in a contact data store;

create a contact-oriented notification associated with the communication from the contact; and

display the contact-oriented notification with a graphical representation of the contact associated with the contact-oriented notification on a display of the mobile communication device.

18. The system of claim 17 wherein the contact-oriented notification associated with the contact-oriented notification on the display further displays a communication mode of the communication.

19. The system of claim 17 wherein the contact-oriented notification further provides a means to respond to the communication.

20. The system of claim 17 wherein the contact-oriented notification corresponds to a graphical representation of a contact that varies in size with the frequency of communication with the contact.