Method for customer definable telephone capability
First Claim
1. A method of controlling the operations of a telephone switching office to provide call processing operations for the disposition of calls directed to telephone customers, comprising the steps ofexecuting different customer-definable programs specific to each of the customers in response to originations of calls to the customers, said programs containing instructions for ascertaining specified parameters of the individual calls and instructions for generating call processing commands according to the specified parameters, andsequentially executing at the office individual ones of a plurality of independent and discrete call processing capabilities specified by the commands, each said capability performing a primitive call processing function inadequate of itself completely to process a call and the aggregate of the capabilities linked by a given customer program on any call being sufficient to completely process the call in accordance with the instructions of the customer program.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A method allowing a customer to define its telephone service within flexible boundaries for calls directed to the customer. Within constraints imposed by the selected embodiment, the method reduces software development traditionally associated with the provision of new services. A plurality of independent call processing capabilities, such as announcement, digit collection, billing, etc., are provided at a switching office. A program defined by a customer is executed in response to each call to the customer. The program makes decisions based on the parameters of the call, such as time, ANI, information digits requested and received from the caller, etc., and links together the appropriate ones of the capabilities in the proper order to dispose of the call based on the call parameters as specified in the program. A customer service may be modified by changing the customer program.
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Citations
26 Claims
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1. A method of controlling the operations of a telephone switching office to provide call processing operations for the disposition of calls directed to telephone customers, comprising the steps of
executing different customer-definable programs specific to each of the customers in response to originations of calls to the customers, said programs containing instructions for ascertaining specified parameters of the individual calls and instructions for generating call processing commands according to the specified parameters, and sequentially executing at the office individual ones of a plurality of independent and discrete call processing capabilities specified by the commands, each said capability performing a primitive call processing function inadequate of itself completely to process a call and the aggregate of the capabilities linked by a given customer program on any call being sufficient to completely process the call in accordance with the instructions of the customer program.
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23. A method of controlling the processing of telephone calls so as to provide individualized service for each of a plurality of customers, comprising the steps of
storing a separate customer program for each of a plurality of customers served by a telephone office, each program comprising a plurality of instructions defining an individualized telephone service for the customer based on selected ones of a prescribed set of defined call parameters set forth in the program instructions, executing the instructions of an appropriate customer program in response to the origination of a call to one of the customers, ascertaining the value of the call parameters specified by the execution of the customer program, generating a sequence of ordered call processing steps required to process the call in accordance with the instructions of the customer program in view of the value of the selected call parameters, and sequentially performing the ordered steps.
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25. A method of controlling the operations of a telephone switching office to provide call processing operations for the disposition of calls directed to telephone customers, comprising the steps of
executing a different customer program for each of the customers in response to originations of calls to the customers, said customer programs thereby ascertaining specified parameters of the individual calls and generating call processing commands according to the specified parameters, and sequentially executing at the office individual ones of a plurality of independent and discrete primitive call processing capabilities specified by the commands thereby to process the call in accordance with the instructions of the customer program.
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26. A method of controlling the operations of a telephone switching office to provide call processing operations for the disposition of calls directed to telephone customers, comprising the steps of
accessing a different stored customer file in response to originations of calls to each customer, said files containing information for generating call processing commands, and sequentially executing at the office individual ones of a plurality of independent call processing capabilities specified by the commands, each said capability performing a primitive call processing function and the aggregate of the capabilities linked thereby on any call being sufficient to process the call in accordance with the customer file information.
Specification