MANAGING CONTACT STATUS UPDATES IN A PRESENCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

• US 20090088144A1
• Filed: 10/02/2007
• Published: 04/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/02/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Masterson, Michael L., Beadle, Gary M.
• Granted Patent: US 9,451,038 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/419
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/329 by task scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/4432 Reducing the energy consumption
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4893 taking into account power or heat criteria power management in computers in general G06F1/3203; thermal management in computers in general G06F1/206
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/145 avoiding end of session, e.g. keep-alive, heartbeats, resumption message or wake-up for inactive or interrupted session
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• 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: H04W 52/0296 switching to a backup power supply
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

Managing online presence information for contacts involves propagating contact status updates from a contact to an interested identity. A contact list may include hundreds to thousands of contacts for an identity. When one of those contacts changes presence status (e.g., from available to do-not-disturb), the change is propagated from a device of the contact, to a server, to one or more devices of the identity maintaining the contact list. Although that single change or status update consumes a small amount of resources, status updates for a larger number of contacts occurring at various times consumes a more substantial amount of resources, including bandwidth and power. Although power consumption may not be a factor for a desktop computer, power consumption for large scale and/or frequent status updates on devices with more limited power sources (e.g., mobile phones, personal data assistants, etc.) may be a significant factor.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving indication of a contact status update holding event occurring at a first device for an online identity represented by a presence management application;

indicating that status updates for a set of one or more online contacts maintained for the identity are to be held at a second device in response to receiving the indication of occurrence of the contact status update holding event;

maintaining status of the set of one or more online contacts of the online identity at the second device based, at least in part, on said indicating while the presence management application continues to represent that the identity is online; and

releasing to the first device updates to the status of the set of one or more online contacts after a releasing event occurs.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the contact status update holding event comprises one of a manual low power event, an automatic low power event, a low use event, a status set event.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the releasing event comprises one of expiration of a time period, power change event, use change event, and a status change event.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the released status updates represent net changes to status of the set of one or more contacts.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said maintaining status comprises setting a bit for a first of the set of contacts to indicate change for the first of the set of contacts.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising piggybacking the status updates on other data transmitted to the first device.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first device transmits status messages for the presence management application less frequently than before occurrence of the contact status update hold event was detected.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising maintaining status of the identity for interested contacts while in a low use mode for the presence management application.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising resetting status of the identity if a keep alive message is not received within a given time period.

10. A method comprising:

updating presence status of an online contact after receiving an indication that presence status for the online contact has changed;

recording an indication that presence status has changed for the online contact;

determining a contact status holding event has occurred for an online identity with a contact list that includes the online contact; and

propagating the change in presence status for the online contact to a client device of the online identity interested in the online contact after a releasing event occurs for the online identity.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the contact status update holding event comprises one of a manual low power event, an automatic low power event, a low use event, a status set event.

12. The method of claim 10, the releasing event comprises one of expiration of a time period, power change event, use change event, and a status change event.

13. The method of claim 10 further comprising:

detecting that the contact status holding event occurs for the online identity; and

recording an indication of the detected contact status holding event.

14. One or more machine-readable media having stored therein a program product, which when executed a set of one or more processor units causes the set of one or more processors units to performs operations that comprise:

receiving indication of a contact status update holding event occurring at a first device for an identity represented by a presence management application as online;

indicating that status updates for a set of one or more contacts maintained for the identity are to be held at a second device in response to receiving the indication of occurrence of the contact status update holding event;

maintaining status of the set of one or more contacts of the identity at the second device based, at least in part, on said indicating while the presence management application continues to represent that the identity is online; and

releasing to the first device updates to the status of the set of one or more contacts after a releasing event occurs.

15. The machine-readable media of claim 14, wherein the contact status update holding event comprises one of a manual low power event, an automatic low power event, a low use event, a status set event.

16. The machine-readable media of claim 14, wherein the releasing event comprises one of expiration of a time period, power change event, use change event, and a status change event.

17. The machine-readable media of claim 14, wherein the released status updates represent net changes to status of the set of one or more contacts.

18. An apparatus comprising:

a network interface configured to transmit and receive data; and

a contact list manager configured to update presence status of a contact after receiving an indication that presence status for the contact has changed, to record an indication that presence status has changed for the contact, and to propagate the change in presence status for the contact to a device of an identity interested in the contact if contact status updates are allowed to be propagated to the device based, at least in part, on an indication of occurrence of a contact status holding event for the identity.

19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the contact list manager is further configured to detect occurrence of the contact status update holding event for the identity and record the indication of the occurrence.

20. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the contact list manager is further configured to detect occurrence of a releasing event and configured to clear the indication of the occurrence of the holding event after detecting the releasing event.