Flexible, tapeless, personalized auto-attendant telephone
DCFirst Claim
Patent Images
1. A method of operating a subscriber terminal telephone to provide a flexible tapeless personalized auto-attendant service, comprising:
- (a) measuring ring cadence of an incoming telephone call;
(b) causing said telephone when in auto-attendant mode to always provide a generic outgoing message (OGM) in response to the incoming telephone call;
(c) answering the incoming telephone call after ringing said telephone for a predetermined number of rings;
(d) selecting one predetermined greeting OGM in response to a predetermined dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signal and playing it;
(e) regenerating ringing in said telephone for a predetermined period in response to another predetermined DTMF signal after said playing step; and
(f) providing an OGM, for message recording, only after said predetermined period in step (e) has ended without an answer to ringing in step (e).
8 Assignments
Litigations
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method of operating a subscriber terminal to provide a flexible tapeless personalized auto-attendant telephone by means of measuring ring cadence of an incoming telephone call; and selecting one outgoing message in response to the ring cadence and playing it after a predetermined number of rings. The method also provides for the selection of group greetings and mailboxes automatically, for example, based on CLID and name match in a directory.
54 Citations
8 Claims
-
1. A method of operating a subscriber terminal telephone to provide a flexible tapeless personalized auto-attendant service, comprising:
-
(a) measuring ring cadence of an incoming telephone call; (b) causing said telephone when in auto-attendant mode to always provide a generic outgoing message (OGM) in response to the incoming telephone call; (c) answering the incoming telephone call after ringing said telephone for a predetermined number of rings; (d) selecting one predetermined greeting OGM in response to a predetermined dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signal and playing it; (e) regenerating ringing in said telephone for a predetermined period in response to another predetermined DTMF signal after said playing step; and (f) providing an OGM, for message recording, only after said predetermined period in step (e) has ended without an answer to ringing in step (e). - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
-
-
5. A flexible tapeless personalized auto-attendant subscriber terminal telephone comprising:
-
(a) means for measuring ring cadence of an incoming call; (b) means for providing a generic outgoing message (OGM) in response to the incoming telephone call; (c) means for answering the incoming telephone call after ringing said telephone for a predetermined number of rings; (d) means for selecting one of a plurality of predetermined greeting OGM in response to a predetermined dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signal and means for playing the greeting OGM; (e) means for regenerating ringing in the subscriber terminal telephone for a predetermined period in response to another predetermined DTMF signal after playing the greeting OGM; and (f) means for providing an OGM for message recording after said predetermined period has ended and regenerated ringing has not been answered. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8)
-
Specification