Personal presentity presence subsystem

• US 8,316,117 B2
• Filed: 09/21/2006
• Issued: 11/20/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/21/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Nguyen, Hong Thi, Denny, Michael Sean
• Primary Examiner(s): THIAW, CATHERINE B
• Application Number:
  US11/524,668
• Publication Number:
  US 20080077696A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,252 Days
• Field of Search: 709201-229
• US Class Current: 709/222
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/54 Presence management, e.g. monitoring or registration for receipt of user log-on information, or the connection status of the users
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A personal presentity presence service provides support for heterogeneous presentities. Presentity types including personal presentities are registered with a presentity manifest store that includes information such as type names, addresses of applications associated with actions related to the presentity type, application parameters, icons for watcher application, and the like. Personal presentity service identifies the personal presentity types associated with the user and automatically organizes these into a personal presence group for management and presentation purposes. Users (watchers) can then register for different groups of personal presentities, which are devices and systems personally associated with the user, based on a type of presentity and receive updated presence information.

Claims

1. A method for providing distributed communication services between a watcher and a plurality of presentities, the method comprising:

receiving, by a computing device, descriptions of available presentities that publish presence information about themselves, wherein the available presentities include a set of classes comprising a person and an inanimate presentity associated with the person, wherein the inanimate presentity associated with the person includes a monitoring device and comprises an interface device which provides a service to the watcher;

wherein descriptions of available inanimate presentities include a designation of a type of inanimate presentity associated with each available inanimate presentity and a list of associated actions that are graphically selectable by the watcher when a presence notification has been received for the inanimate presentity associated with a particular type of inanimate presentity, a selection of an associated action thereby causing execution of the action selected, wherein the selected action is executed by the interface device of the inanimate presentity;

creating a group of inanimate presentities by automatically grouping the available inanimate presentities based on the type of inanimate presentity shared amongst the group; and

providing a user interface of a watcher application that includes a user option to the watcher to create a sub-grouping within each inanimate presentity type, wherein the user interface is dynamically reconfigured to provide updated actions associated with a newly subscribed inanimate presentity by the watcher, wherein the updated actions are selectable by the watcher and the newly subscribed inanimate presentity is of a type different from other types of inanimate presentities previously subscribed by the watcher.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a request for subscription to the group of inanimate presentities;

subscribing the watcher to the group of inanimate presentities; and

dynamically reconfiguring the user interface of the watcher application in response to the subscribing of the watcher to the group of inanimate presentities.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

presenting the watcher with a list of actions associated with the group of inanimate presentities.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein presenting the watcher with the list of actions includes reconfiguring the user interface of the watcher application based on features and capabilities of a subscribed inanimate presentity.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the descriptions of the available inanimate presentities include at least one from a set of:

a name for each description, an address of at least one application associated with an action related to a particular inanimate presentity type, at least one parameter associated with the application, at least one icon to be used in the user interface of the watcher application, and an authorization definition.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

activating an application associated with one of the available inanimate presentities in response to a selection of an associated action by the watcher.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

dynamically modifying the group of the available inanimate presentities in response to a change in a state of at least one of the available inanimate presentities.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

grouping the available inanimate presentities based on one of;

a set of presence service provider rules and a set of watcher rules.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a user input from the watcher to create a sub-group within the inanimate presentity type, the sub-group being a subset of the presentities of the inanimate presentity type.

10. A system for providing distributed access services in a presence system between a watcher and a personal presentity, comprising:

a presence service management component configured to;

in response to a request from a presence application, register a presentity class with a presentity manifest store, wherein the presentity class includes an inanimate presentity associated with a person and a person, the inanimate presentity associated with the person including a monitoring device; and

register any inanimate presentity of a registered class that is added to the presence system with a presentity store;

a presence server configured to;

subscribe a watcher application to a requested group of inanimate presentities based on a type of the inanimate presentities such that the watcher application is dynamically configured based on presentity manifest information associated with the inanimate presentities in the group; and

in response to receiving updated presence information from the inanimate presentities belonging to the requested group, provide the updated presence information to the watcher application subscribed to the requested group; and

a group management component configured to provide a user interface of the watcher application that includes a user option to create a buddy list within each inanimate presentity type, wherein the user interface is dynamically reconfigured to provide updated actions associated with a newly subscribed inanimate presentity by the watcher, wherein the updated actions are selectable by the watcher when a presence notification has been received for a particular inanimate presentity and the newly subscribed inanimate presentity is of a type different from other types of inanimate presentities previously subscribed by the watcher, wherein an action selected is executed by an interface device of the inanimate presentity.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising:

a directory service configured to;

receive a presentity registration request from the presence application; and

manage the registration of the presentity with the presentity manifest store.

12. The system of claim 10, the group management component further configured to:

receive a request for subscription to a buddy list of inanimate presentities from the watcher application; and

subscribe the watcher application to the requested buddy list of inanimate presentities based on the type of the inanimate presentities in the group.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the watcher application is dynamically reconfigured based on the type of the inanimate presentities in the buddy list.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the group management component is further configured to group the inanimate presentities based on at least one of:

a set of service provider rules provided by the presence service and a set of user rules provided by the watcher application.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the presence service, the presence service management component, and the group management component are configured to communicate through one or more session initiation protocol sessions using an internet protocol multimedia system infrastructure.

16. The system of claim 10, wherein the inanimate presentities include at least one from a set of:

a monitoring device, an alarm system, an entry system, and a control system associated with the watcher that are configured to communicate with the presence application through one of a wired and wireless network.

17. A non-transitory computer storage medium encoding a computer program of instructions for executing the following process:

retrieving descriptions of available presentities associated with a presence service, the descriptions including a person class and an inanimate presentity class associated with a person, the inanimate presentity class associated with the person including a monitoring device;

subscribing a watcher application to a group of inanimate presentities among the available presentities, the inanimate presentities in the group sharing a common type of inanimate presentity;

providing manifest information associated with each of the inanimate presentities in the group to which the watcher application is subscribed such that the watcher application is dynamically configured based on the manifest information associated with the inanimate presentities in the group;

providing presence information from the inanimate presentities in the group to which the watcher application is subscribed; and

providing a user interface of the watcher application that includes a user option to create at least one sub-grouping within each inanimate presentity type, wherein the user interface is dynamically reconfigured to provide updated actions associated with a newly subscribed inanimate presentity by the watcher, wherein the updated actions are selectable by the watcher when a presence notification has been received for a particular inanimate presentity and the newly subscribed inanimate presentity is of a type different from other types of inanimate presentities previously subscribed by the watcher, wherein an action selected is executed by an interface device of the inanimate presentity.

18. The non-transitory computer storage medium encoding a computer program of instructions of claim 17, further comprising:

registering a new inanimate presentity type based on a capability and at least one feature of a new inanimate presentity of the type to be registered; and

registering new inanimate presentities under a group based on the newly registered inanimate presentity type.

19. The non-transitory computer storage medium encoding a computer program of instructions of claim 17, further comprising:

receiving a selected action associated with the provided presence information from the watcher application; and

performing the selected action by activating at least one client application associated with the inanimate presentity that provided the presence information.

20. The non-transitory computer storage medium encoding a computer program of instructions of claim 17, further comprising:

automatically providing updated manifest information to the watcher application in response to one of;

addition of a new inanimate presentity type, removal of an existing inanimate presentity type, and modification of manifest information associated with the inanimate presentity type.