Active session queue management using contextual systems with an instant messaging proxy service

• US 20070016643A1
• Filed: 07/14/2005
• Published: 01/18/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/14/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Snap, Inc.
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Chen, Yen-Fu, Hamilton, Rick, Seaman, James, Waters, Timothy, Pandya, Aroopratan, Boss, Gregory
• Granted Patent: US 7,519,672 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/04 Real-time or near real-time messaging, e.g. instant messaging [IM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/214 using selective forwarding

Abstract

A system and method for providing implementing proxy handling of instant messages and the like, wherein proxy recipients are designated by an original recipient, and one or more redirection rules are established indicating conditions under which said designated proxy recipients are to be sent redirected messages. When an instant message is received directed towards the original recipient, the redirection rules are evaluated and the message is redirect to a designated proxy recipient according to the redirection rules, with the display of the received message being suppressed or blocked on the intended original recipient'"'"'s user interface.

Claims

1. A system for providing enhanced handling of messages in an instant messaging service, the system comprising:

one or more designations of proxy recipients related to an original recipient;

one or more redirection rules indicating conditions under which said designated proxy recipients are to be sent redirected messages, said rules containing at least one rule besides a rule to forward all messages;

an instant message proxy receiver which receives an instant message directed towards said original recipient from a sender; and

an instant message proxy sender for evaluating said redirection rules, for sending said received message to a designated proxy recipient according to said redirection rules, and for suppressing instant delivery of said message to a user interface associated with said original recipient.

2. The system as set forth in claim 1 wherein said instant message proxy receiver and instant message proxy transmitter are disposed cooperatively with an instant messaging server.

3. The system as set forth in claim 1 wherein said instant message proxy receiver and instant message proxy sender are disposed cooperatively with an instant messaging client.

4. The system as set forth in claim 1 wherein said instant message proxy transmitter is further adapted to modify said redirected message to include a human-readable notification regarding redirection of the redirected message.

5. The system as set forth in claim 1 wherein said instant message proxy transmitter is further adapted to delay redirection of said message, send a notification message of pending redirection to said sender, and complete said redirection upon meeting one or more predetermined conditions.

6. The system as set forth in claim 5 wherein said notification to said sender includes a query to allow or cancel said pending redirection, said message proxy transmitter being further adapted to receive a query response from said sender, to suppress said step of sending said received instant message to a designated proxy recipient upon a cancellation choice by said sender.

7. The system as set forth in claim 5 wherein said notification to said sender includes a query indicating the unavailability of said original recipient and providing one or more alternate recipients, and wherein said message proxy transmitter is further adapted to receive a query response from said sender, and to select a proxy recipient according to said sender'"'"'s response.

8. The system as set forth in claim 1 further comprising a message queue for containing an ordered set of message copies, said message copies including said messages transmitted to a proxy recipient.

9. The system as set forth in claim 8 wherein said message queue is cooperatively disposed with an instant message server.

10. The system as set forth in claim 8 wherein said message queue is cooperatively disposed with an instant message client.

11. The system as set forth in claim 8 further comprising a queue entry reorderer adapted to reorder said message copies according to context of said messages.

12. The system as set forth in claim 8 further comprising a queue entry reorderer adapted to reorder said message copies according to content of said messages.

13. The system as set forth in claim 8 further comprising an automatic actor for acting on a message which has reached a maximum time-to-live storage time in said queue.

14. The system as set forth in claim 8 wherein said automatic actor is adapted to automatically complete a transaction with a scheduling application program to establish an item selected from the list of an appointment, a meeting, and a task.

15. A method for conducting a transaction in an on-demand computing environment comprising the steps of:

providing transaction-oriented process software in a shared file system to provide one or more designations of proxy recipients related to an original recipient, to provide one or more redirection rules indicating conditions under which said designated proxy recipients are to be sent redirected messages, said rules containing at least one rule besides a rule to forward all messages, to receives an instant message directed towards said original recipient from a sender, to evaluate said redirection rules, to send said received message to a designated proxy recipient according to said redirection rules, and to suppress instant delivery of said received message to a user interface associated with said original recipient;

executing said process software in an on-demand computing system wherein the transactions provided by said process software are automatically shared by simultaneously serving multiple customers;

differentiating and recording each customer'"'"'s usage of said process software according to one or more parameters included in said transactions, said parameters uniquely identifying each customer and a type of transaction conducted for that customer;

responsive to a number of simultaneous transactions to any one server exceeding a performance limit of a given server, automatically accessing one or more additional servers to increase the capacity and to share the workload;

16. The method as set forth in claim 15 further comprising providing transaction processing capacity to at least one customer using a pay-as-you-go model in which charges are posted for actual computing resource consumption.

17. The method as set forth in claim 16 wherein with resource consumption is metered in at least one unit selected from the group of processor units of time, processor operations, number of transactions completed, network bandwidth utilized, memory usage, storage usage, and number of communications packet transfers completed.

18. The method as set forth in claim 16 wherein said pay-as-you-go model further comprises automatically requesting payment by a service provider directly from a customer account at a banking or financial institution.

19. The method as set forth in claim 16 further comprising:

collecting by a billing server from a transaction server one or more service consumption measurements for a customer;

periodically summing said collected measurements for said customer;

multiplying said summed measurements by a unit cost factor to yield a total process software application service cost for said customer; and

posting said total process software application service cost to said customer for payment collection.

20. The method as set forth in claim 15 wherein said step of automatically accessing one or more additional servers to increase the capacity and to share the workload is further responsive to exceeding a measured aggregate capacity limit of a server selected from the group of maximum network bandwidth, maximum memory usage, and maximum storage usage.