Intelligent contact management

• US 8,805,450 B2
• Filed: 09/05/2008
• Issued: 08/12/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/05/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Wen, Yandong, Chen, Liang, Vronay, David, Sundling, Rebecca
• Primary Examiner(s): Safaipour, Bobbak
• Assistant Examiner(s): Tran, Paul P
• Application Number:
  US12/204,819
• Publication Number:
  US 20100062753A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,167 Days
• Field of Search: 455/405, 455/412.2, 455/414.1, 455/418, 455/456.1, 455/466, 455/512, 455/558, 455/566, 345/157, 345/440, 345/581, 345/619, 379/88.19, 379/127.01, 379/142.01, 379/355.02, 707/705, 707/792, 715/735
• US Class Current: 455/566
• 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

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

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

automatically creating a prioritized contact grouping comprising contacts with a higher communication frequency being grouped in a grouping of favorite contacts and given greater priority for being more prominently displayed than lower priority contacts, and an associated prioritized communication mode grouping for each contact wherein a communication mode with a higher communication mode frequency is given higher priority;

automatically creating a notification to alert the user which displays an image of the prioritized contact when an incoming communication has been received from the prioritized contact along with an associated prioritized communication mode from the prioritized communication mode grouping based on the communication mode frequency; and

monitoring the automatically created grouping of favorite contacts and including a contact or deleting a contact from the favorite contacts based on contact frequency statistics.

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 more prominently displaying communication modes with a higher priority.

7. The computer-implemented process of claim 6, further comprising displaying communication modes with a higher priority larger on a touch screen display of the communication device.

8. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 wherein a user can override the prioritized contact grouping and wherein the user is prompted to change the priority of a contact in the contact grouping.

9. The computer-implemented process of claim 1, further comprising prompting the user to call a contact in the favorite contacts based on contact frequency statistics.

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

entering a value or text into a predefined content field associated with one or more contacts in a contact store on the 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 wherein a user can override a contact grouping;

automatically creating a prioritized contact grouping based on contact frequency statistics comprising contacts with a higher communication frequency being grouped in a grouping of favorite contacts and given greater priority for being more prominently displayed than lower priority contacts, and an associated prioritized communication mode grouping for each contact wherein a communication mode with a higher communication mode frequency is given higher priority; and

monitoring the automatically created prioritized contact grouping and prompting the user to manually change the prioritized contact grouping based on contact frequency statistics to create a new prioritized contact grouping.

11. The computer-implemented process of claim 10, further comprising automatically grouping contacts having the same tag as a 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 all of the contacts of a grouping as a single graphical representation of the contacts of the grouping on the display of the mobile communication device.

14. The computer-implemented process of claim 13, further comprising displaying individual contacts within a grouping on the display of the mobile communication device when the single 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 same contact in a contact data store;

create a contact-oriented notification associated with the communication from the contact comprising the text of the communication, the name of the contact, and a priority mode of communication associated with the contact based on communication mode frequency wherein a given communication mode with a higher communication mode frequency is given higher priority; and

automatically display the contact-oriented notification alerting a user that a communication from the contact has been received 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 further provides a means to respond to the communication.

19. 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.