Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Interaction with an external nontelephone network
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-31
2004-12-07
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Interaction with an external nontelephone network
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06829333
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a computer system for automatically generating and sending messages to recipients in response to events when specified conditions are met.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
People working in organizations often need to know and/or track events relevant to their specific duties and responsibilities within their organizations. In addition, people often need or desire to know and/or track events relevant to their personal lives. Therefore, the need to automatically generate and deliver messages in response to events that meet a prescribed set of conditions is well known.
Current methods for automatically generating messages require a simple (i.e., direct) relationship between the event and the recipient of the message. For example, an investor can instruct an online trading system to send a page or an e-mail “when the stock price of XYZ reaches 50”. As another example, a mainframe supervisory operator can instruct an automated paging system to page the operator if the mainframe computer goes down. As a further example, a consumer can instruct an electronic-commerce website to send an e-mail notifying her when a sweater in her size is in stock. It is not straightforward, however, for an automated process to generate messages where a complex or indirect relationship exists, such as an instruction to “tell me when the stock price of any company that is owned by a company in which my brother has stock reaches 50”, or “page me if a mainframe computer in a building managed by Jones goes down”, or “e-mail me when a sweater in one of my children's sizes is in stock”.
A more detailed example of the requirement to automatically generate and deliver messages in response to events is the field of asset management. All organizations, large and small, manage the assets they own or control. Some organizations track their assets to calculate the property, plant and equipment figures for their balance sheets. Other organizations, such as hospitals, track the use of their assets in order to allocate costs associated with those assets to a separate entity (e.g., insurance companies, Medicare). Still other organizations, including many government contractors, universities and research laboratories, use assets purchased as part of their contracts with the government and so must track those assets using strict accountability requirements that typically accompany these contracts.
A simple approach to asset management is to have a database of assets. A typical record in an asset database would include a unique asset identifier, such as an asset number, an asset description and a location within the organization where the asset is deployed. The asset database must be kept up to date as assets are acquired, disposed of, or moved from location to location. A centralized approach to asset management entails having a central group of asset managers track the assets and update the asset database for all work groups within the organization. However, this can add considerable overhead to the process of managing assets, since an asset manager would need to be called in and take some action for each acquisition, disposal, or movement of an asset from one location to another. If the organization is large, there may be many asset managers. An individual desiring to move an asset from one end of a building to another might find it difficult to identify the correct asset manager to inform of the move.
Another approach is to decentralize the asset management process so that each work group within the organization is responsible for tracking its own assets and making the appropriate updates to the database. While decentralization does make some administrative processes easier, it can make asset management and reporting more difficult from the perspective of the overall organization. Consequently, decentralization might not be acceptable to some organizations that require strict control over their assets.
This shows the need exists in both centralized and decentralized asset management to automatically generate messages in response to changes (which are events) recorded in an asset database. This is also illustrative of the more general requirement for the automated generation of messages in response to events in any circumstance.
Computer systems that generate e-mail messages in response to the recordation of events in a database exist in the prior art. However, these systems are not capable of generating a message when an indirect relationship exists between the event and the message recipient. These systems are also not typically capable of generating messages for a plurality of delivery mechanisms, i.e., they generate messages for delivery by e-mail only.
As used herein, the term “database” generally refers to collections of data organized into structured forms. Some well-known database forms include hierarchical, or tree, structures, relational data structures, network structures, and graph structures.
The data in a database is typically organized to permit easy retrieval of information. Databases are typically used to provide multiple users with access to information in a variety of formats. A database may be implemented on a variety of computer platforms (e.g., personal computer, minicomputer, mainframe computer) and operating systems (e.g., Windows, Macintosh, VMS, OS/390). In some uses of the term “database”, the database includes a database engine. A database engine provides an interface for users or programs to access (e.g., read, write, modify) data in the database. For example, an SQL (Structured Query Language) database system might integrate a database and a database engine so that a user or program need not fully understand the details of the database, but need only be able to formulate SQL statements and present those statements to the database system. A database engine can be implemented in dedicated hardware, be embodied in software executed by a general-purpose computer, or be some combination of those.
As used herein, the term “message” refers to data that forms a communication from one or more sources to one or more recipients. A source or recipient is that which has the capability to generate or receive, respectively, a message, and includes an individual, entity, process or location. The capability to generate or receive messages may be provided through any conventional device or technology including Internet appliances, personal digital assistants, pagers, phones, fax machines and computers.
The term “e-mail” generally refers to a utility for communicating messages over a network between e-mail “boxes” that are each associated with a source and/or recipient. Typically, an e-mail message is a “store-and-forward” message, which allows a recipient to receive a message even if the recipient is not connected to the network when the message is sent. With a store-and-forward system, a message travels from the source to the recipient along a path and where the path is temporarily blocked, as would be the case if the device that connects the recipient to the network is temporarily off-line, the message is held and delivered the next time the intended recipient connects to the network.
The term “FAX” generally refers to a utility for communicating messages that are transmitted in a nonreal-time fashion (such as store-and-forward) where the messages are formatted as telephonically transmittable data that is delivered to a device capable of decoding the data and displaying or storing it in a plurality of formats, such as a printed page, a file on a computer's hard drive or spoken word.
The term “voice mail” generally refers to a utility for communicating messages that are transmitted in a nonreal-time fashion (such as store-and-forward) where the messages are formatted as audio data representing human or computer-generated speech, preferably in a language understandable to the recipient.
The terms “textual page” and “page” generally refers to a utility for communicating messages formatted as a signal that triggers a small electronic device called
Albert Philip H.
Chow Ming
Frazier Spaeth LLC
Townsend and Townsend / and Crew LLP
Tsang Fan
LandOfFree
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