INTEGRATING DATA WITH CONVERSATIONS

• US 20080075074A1
• Filed: 09/22/2006
• Published: 03/27/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Elumalai, Arulkumar, Raghav, Amritansh, Shtiegman, Eran, Ramanathan, Rajesh, Combel, Craig M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,576,851 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/389
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/6418 Hybrid transport

Abstract

A facility for integrating data in conversations is provided. In various embodiments, the facility sends a first message to a responding computing device to begin a conversation, receives a second message associated with the conversation from the responding computing device, determines whether the received message contains an indication of data that is to be associated with the conversation and, when the received message contains an indication of data that is to be associated with the conversation, renders the data. The facility can comprise an application server that receives from an initiator a first message associated with a conversation and responds to received messages, a conversation component that handles messages associated with the conversation, and an integration component that determines whether there is data that is to be associated with the conversation and, if so, adds an indication of the data to a second message that it sends to the initiator.

Claims

1. A method performed by a computing system for integrating data in a conversation, comprising:

sending a first message to a responding computing device to begin a conversation;

receiving a second message associated with the conversation from the responding computing device;

determining whether the received message contains an indication of data that is to be associated with the conversation; and

when the received message contains an indication of data that is to be associated with the conversation, rendering the data.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the rendering includes creating a window in which the data is to be rendered.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the rendering includes retrieving information identified by the data.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the retrieving includes loading a web page identified by a uniform resource locator, the uniform resource locator identified by the data.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the conversation is a voice conversation and the data indicates a web page.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the conversation is an audio/video conversation and the data indicates a web page.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the first message is a session initiation protocol INVITE message.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the second message is a session initiation protocol INFO message.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the indication is expressed using an extensible markup language.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the indication is provided in a body of the second message.

11. A system for integrating data in a conversation, comprising:

an application server that receives from an initiator computing device a first message associated with a conversation and responds to received messages;

a conversation component associated with the application server that handles messages associated with the conversation; and

an integration component that determines whether there is data that is to be associated with the conversation and, if so, adds an indication of the data to a second message that it sends to the initiator computing device.

12. The system of claim 11 further comprising a data component that locates the data.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the application server receives messages that a communications server forwards when the communications server receives messages from a client computing device.

14. The system of claim 11 wherein the conversation component handles a voice conversation and the integration component adds an indication of a uniform resource locator to the second message.

15. The system of claim 11 wherein the conversation component handles an audio/video conversation and the integration component adds an indication of a uniform resource locator to the second message.

16. The system of claim 11 wherein the indication references a web page that receives data and provides the received data to a component associated with the application server.

17. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions that, when executed, perform a method for integrating data in a conversation, the method comprising:

receiving a first message from an initiator computing device to initiate a conversation;

creating a second message;

determining whether data is to be associated with the conversation;

indicating the data in the second message; and

sending the second message to the initiator computing device so that the initiator computing device can render data in such a way that the conversation is integrated with the rendered data.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the conversation employs a Voice over Internet Protocol and the data identifies a uniform resource locator associated with a web page.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the indicating includes employing an extensible markup language to indicate the data in a body section of the second message.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 further comprising receiving a third message containing an indication of the data indicated in the second message.