MULTIMODAL CONVERSATION STATE AND TRANSFER THROUGH CENTRALIZED NOTIFICATION

• US 20110225248A1
• Filed: 03/15/2010
• Published: 09/15/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Levin, Danny, Deshpande, Vinit, Elumalai, Arulkumar, Boyer, Marc
• Application Number:
  US12/723,900
• Publication Number:
  US 20110225248A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1818 Conference organisation arrangements, e.g. handling schedules, setting up parameters needed by nodes to attend a conference, booking network resources, notifying involved parties
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/046 Interoperability with other network applications or services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1093 by adding participants; by removing participants
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1094 Inter-user-equipment sessions transfer or sharing
• 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 3/58 Arrangements for transferring received calls from one subscriber to another; Arrangements affording interim conversations between either the calling or the called party and a third party substation line holding circuits H04M1/80

Abstract

A mechanism is provided for enabling subscribers of an enhanced communication system to switch endpoints during a conversation, add or remove modalities, invite new participants while continuing the conversation seamlessly. Active endpoints associated with a participant in a conversation may publish their states to a managing server and become aware of a status of the ongoing conversation. Subsequently, the participants may seamlessly switch to another endpoint and continue the conversation using the other endpoint.

Claims

1. A method to be executed at least in part in a computing device for managing multimodal conversation state and transfer through centralized notification in an enhanced communication system, the method comprising:

receiving updates from endpoints participating in a first conversation;

publishing the updates to all endpoints associated with participants of the first conversation;

enabling establishment of a second conversation by one of the endpoints associated with participants of the first conversation, wherein the second conversation is a continuation of the first conversation;

receiving updates from endpoints participating in the second conversation; and

publishing the updates to all endpoints associated with participants of the second conversation.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the second conversation is established through transmission of an invite message with a replace parameter from an endpoint selected by one of the participants.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the replace parameter indicates to receiving endpoints which conversation is being continued by the second conversation.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the updates from the endpoints participating in the first conversation include information associated with at least one from a set of:

a state of each endpoint, a capability of each endpoint, and information associated with the first conversation.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the information associated with the first conversation includes at least one from a set of:

a type of the conversation, a length of the conversation, a list of participants of the conversation, and a priority of the conversation.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the updates from the endpoints participating in the first conversation are received through a presence publication and updates are published to all endpoints associated with the participants of the first conversation through subscription to a self-presence channel.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling the endpoints to add a new modality to one of the first and the second conversations.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the endpoint adding the new modality is enabled to add the new modality based on at least one of:

a capability of other participating endpoints and a preference of subscribers associated with the other participating endpoints.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling the endpoints to invite a new participant to one of the first and second conversations.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

archiving combined records of the first and second conversations by reconciling the records upon termination of the second conversation.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the modalities of the first and second conversations include one from a set of:

audio communication, video communication, an application sharing session, a data sharing session, a whiteboard sharing session, an electronic mail exchange, and an instant message session.

12. A communication system for managing multimodal conversation state and transfer through centralized notification in an enhanced communication system, the system comprising:

a communication server configured to facilitate multimodal communications between endpoints of the system;

a presence server configured to;

receive presence updates from endpoints participating in a first conversation;

publish the updates to endpoints associated with participants of the first conversation through a self-subscription presence channel such that the endpoints are enabled to establish a second conversation, the second conversation being a continuation of the first conversation;

receive presence updates from endpoints participating in the second conversation; and

publish the updates to all endpoints associated with participants of the second conversation through the self-subscription presence channel.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the parameters include at least one from a set of:

modalities of the conversation, documents generated during the conversation, records of the conversation, a list of participants, and security attributes.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein a subscriber associated with one of the endpoints is enabled to at least one of:

add a new modality and invite a new participant to one of the first and the second conversations based on the preserved parameters.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the first and second conversations are facilitated by one of:

dedicated servers for each distinct modality of the conversations, multipurpose servers, and a combination of servers and endpoints.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein the enhanced communication system is implemented as one of:

a single network system in an enterprise environment and a multi-network system in a federated environment.

17. A computer-readable storage medium with instructions stored thereon for managing multimodal conversation state and transfer through centralized notification in an enhanced communication system, the instructions comprising:

receiving updates from endpoints participating in a plurality of conversations, wherein the updates include a state of each endpoint and a list of conversations associated with each endpoint;

aggregating the updates;

publishing the aggregated updates to all endpoints associated with participants of the plurality of conversations;

receiving an invite message with a replace parameter from one of the endpoints for initiating a new conversation, wherein the new conversation is a continuation of a selected one of the plurality of conversations;

enabling the endpoint initiating the new conversation to add a modality to the new conversation based on capabilities of the endpoint; and

upon termination of the new conversation, archiving combined records of the new conversation and the conversation replaced by the new conversation by reconciling the records.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the instructions further comprise:

providing a subscriber associated with the endpoint initiating the new conversation information about at least one conversation facilitated by the subscriber'"'"'s other endpoints.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein the information provided to the subscriber includes at least one from a set of:

modalities of the at least one conversation, a duration of the at least one conversation, participants of the at least one conversation, and a priority status of the at least one conversation.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the instructions further comprise:

enabling the endpoint initiating the new conversation to replace at least two of the plurality of conversations with the new conversation.