Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Multimedia system
Reexamination Certificate
1998-06-24
2003-10-21
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Multimedia system
C379S087000, C379S093110, C379S118000, C379S142140, C379S088060, C379S088250
Reexamination Certificate
active
06636587
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a computer-telephony integration system (hereinafter referred to as “CTI system”) and an information reception processing method to provide an information processing environment for integrating communications with a computer, and particularly relates to a CTI system and an information reception processing method in which information (e.g. multimedia information with voice, text and image) sent from a transmitter side by an arbitrary information transmission means can be automatically converted and transmitted to a connection destination allowed to receive the information by a receiving-side subject in accordance with the reception environment in the connection destination.
In recent years, a CTI system for integrating a telephone with a computer has been demanded under an environment of call center, office, SOHO (Small Office Home Office), virtual enterprise, CALS (Commerce At Light Speed), or the like. Under the aforementioned environment, the CTI system uses multimedia information (e.g. voice, text and image) to construct an effective and efficient communication environment by using a multimodal communication means such as a telephone, a facsimile equipment or a personal computer or to construct an effective and efficient work aiding environment for associating a telephone system with a work system such as a groupware system or a business application by the multimodal communication means. For example, in call center work or office work, such a CTI system has been demanded for integrating computer processing with a conventional telephone system to aid work information with use of the telephone system or for associating one information system with another information system to aid integrated information of a system under an internet/intranet environment and the conventional telephone system to thereby attain improvement in work efficiency and customer's satisfation.
Incidentally, as a conventional techniques of this type, there is a unified messaging technique in which communication means using various media such as voice, text and image information from various information appliances such as a telephone, facsimile equipment and a personal computer are unified in order to improve communication efficiency in office or SOHO. The technique is described in Workgroup Computer Report Vol. 19, No. 4, 1996, pp.12-17 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,524,137.
As another conventional technique, there is a telephony agent technique in which a person in charge of call center work in the past or a person having skill in call center work is automatically specified as a destination of telephone call by computer processing so that improvement in work efficiency and customer's satisfication is attained by automatic acceptance/transfer and reduction of human load in a great deal of telephone calls occurring in call center work. The technique is described in Workgroup Computing Report Vol. 19, No. 4, 1966, pp.18-21.
However, the aforementioned conventional techniques merely control a destination of connection but do not control the manner of transmission of information in accordance with the reception environment on the destination of connection. There arises therefore a problem that user's transmission/reception of information can be performed only by a transmission/reception means designated on the system in advance and that a user is not allowed to select a contact means freely. As a result, the CTI technique and the unified messaging technique having association with groupware have not achieved any situation in which a user is allowed to have effective use of a communication environment that the user can use various connection means such as a telephone, facsimile equipment and a personal computer and various media such as voice, text and image.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the present invention is to provide an information reception processing method and a computer-telephony integration system in which transmission control can be performed in accordance with the information reception environment of a receiving-side subject when multimedia communication information is transmitted from a sending-side subject to the receiving-side subject.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a recording medium on which programs and data to be used in the above-mentioned information reception processing method and computer-telephony integration system are recorded.
In order to achieve the above objects, according to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information reception processing method for transmitting information from an arbitrary information sending source to a specific receiving-side subject which is a destination of information transmission, the method comprising the steps of: preliminarily registering reception-environment information including, at least, contact-enabled-means information for indicating means allowed to receive information, contact-point information for designating a contact point of the means allowed to receive information, and reception-condition information for indicating a condition of information reception at the contact point, in accordance with an original destination in each of receiving-side subjects of information reception; and performing contact adjustment by referring to the reception-environment information when information destined for any one of the receiving-side subjects arrives to thereby acquire the contact-enabled-means information and contact-point information which can be received at the destined receiving-side subject, making judgment as to whether or not the arrived information satisfies a reception condition indicated by the reception-condition information of the receiving-side subject, and converting the arrived information so as to satisfy the reception condition when the reception condition is not satisfied and transmitting the converted information to the contact point.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer-telephony integration system for transmitting information from an arbitrary information sending source to a specific receiving-side subject which is a destination of information transmission, the system comprising: a reception-environment-information registration means for registering reception-environment information including, at least, contact-enabled-means information for indicating means allowed to receive information, contact-point information for designating a contact point of means allowed to receive information, and reception-condition information for indicating a condition of information reception at the contact point, in accordance with an original destination in each of receiving-side subjects of information reception; and contact adjustment means for performing contact adjustment by referring to the reception-environment information when information destined for any one of the receiving-side subjects arrives to thereby acquire the contact-enabled-means information and contact-point information which can be received at the destined receiving-side subject, making judgment as to whether or not the arrived information satisfies a reception condition indicated by the reception-condition information of the receiving-side subject, and converting the arrived information so as to satisfy the reception condition and transmitting the converted information to the contact point.
For example, the aforementioned reception-environment-information registration means may include storage means for storing reception-environment information, and means for accepting a reception-environment-information setting operation from the outside of the system.
Here, preferably, the aforementioned means for accepting a reception-environment-information setting operation has a function for displaying a reception-environment-information setting screen to carry out the reception-environment-information setting operation, a function for accepting an input in accordance with the screen, and a function for making the storage
Matsui Susumu
Nagai Yasuhiko
Antonelli Terry Stout & Kraus LLP
Hitachi , Ltd.
Singh S. P.
Tsang Fan
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