Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Multimedia system
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-07
2002-06-25
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Multimedia system
C379S088130, C379S088190, C379S088220
Reexamination Certificate
active
06411684
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates in general to the field of communications and information management systems and more particularly to an improved network-based voice messaging and multimedia communications and directory system and method of operation.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Currently available communications facilities include voice communication, electronic mail communication, facsimile communication and video communication. These communications facilities are augmented by storage and retrieval facilities such as voice mail facilities, bulletin board services and the like. These various communications facilities have largely been operated on independent platforms, interconnected into private networks, and through independent and disparate channels of communication.
While local area network (LAN) based mail systems such as cc: Mail or large private electronic mail providers such as MCI Mail have facilitated some networking capability in electronic mail content, other communications facilities such as voice messaging and facsimile transmissions are largely localized facilities. For example, typical messaging systems are constrained within a single organization such as a company or at the broadest within a single local exchange carrier facility. In light of the largely local nature of messaging facilities and the incompatibility of proprietary messaging protocols, there has been little effort to supply large scale integrated network functionality to these communications services. In addition, most of these facilities are limited to a single media such as only voice, only electronic mail, or only facsimile transmissions.
Additionally, in particular, voice messaging systems have not provided large scale integrated network functionality due to the following limitations:
1) Their terminal equipment is usually a telephone, which can only communicate with audio signaling such as Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) signals.
2) The methods of addressing are frequently short, fixed length numerical addresses and currently deployed numbering schemes.
3) Messages are typically large, spanning several minutes of digitized analog audio signals.
4) Identity confirmation of the sender or recipient must be a spoken identification such as a mailbox number or a name.
5) Directory type functions such as lookup can not be done with ASCII type inputs but again are restricted to DTMF inputs.
6) Communications protocols associated with voice messaging systems do not provide the facilities necessary to request or specify special services such as media translation, subject matter identification and routing, and the like.
A further complication in the growth of existing messaging systems and networks is the parallel increase in the complexity of managing the directory and addressing information associated with the network. Existing directory facilities are usually limited to a single system or, at most, a single organization. It is difficult, if not impossible with current systems, to acquire and use effectively directory information from other facilities as the integrated system increases in complexity as other facilities are added to the network. These large scale directories are more complicated to deal with in voice messaging systems due to the fact that any functionality, such as retrieval or lookup, provided to the user is restricted to DTMF inputs.
The isolated nature of present messaging systems provides for little standardization that may be used to effect the communications between disparate systems that must occur for effective networking of systems. As such, even messaging systems that are working in the same media, for example, two voice messaging systems, may be incapable of transferring information and messages between the systems due to the differences in the protocols used by the systems to process and transfer messages.
The management of message traffic in a networked environment creates additional concerns. As a message passes out of the control of a local messaging system and into the network, the responsibility for routing and delivery of the message must also pass to the network. This responsibility creates a need for a network with significant message tracking and management capabilities. The complexity of this management task grows enormously as the size of the network increases. This complexity further increases with voice messaging systems due to the addressing being numerical, and limited in size most often to the sender/recipient's phone number or some other local private numbering plan, and to the size of the addressing fields in any of the local networking protocols.
Accordingly, a need has arisen for an integrated communications system which supplies network-based voice and multimedia communication facilities, and voice and multimedia directory services for communications including voice mail, electronic mail, facsimile transmissions, voice transmissions and video transmissions.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a communications system is disclosed which substantially eliminates or reduces disadvantages associated with prior.systems and solutions and provides new solutions never before available. In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, a network-based voice and multimedia communications system is provided that comprises a plurality of network hubs operable to communicate with each other and with local messaging systems. The network hubs operate to receive messages in any media using any addressing convention from users either directly or through local messaging systems and to transmit the messages to other users whether located on local messaging systems or otherwise through the plurality of network hubs. This capability introduces a further complication for voice messaging systems that has yet to be encountered, in that voice messaging systems must be accessed and addressed utilizing standard DTMF signaling, numerical addressing and directory queries, and all within the native protocol of the user messaging system. According to one embodiment of the present invention, the network hubs are in constant communication with one another and constantly update a directory database which comprises user profiles for users of the communications system. The user profiles include identification confirmations associated with the users, such as a user's spoken name, as well as other user-specific information. The communications system is operable to transmit an identification confirmation for a given user when another user of the communications system attempts to send a message to that user. For large scale integrated network functionality, interfacing with voice messaging systems introduces a further complication for user profiles including identification confirmation in that large distributed network directories must be built and maintained based upon numerical addressing and accessed utilizing DTMF signaling and the native protocols of the user messaging system.
According to a further embodiment of the present invention, the network hubs are operable to maintain and store user profiles that include user preferences associated with each user. The communications system of the present invention is operable to perform media translations such that messages received in one media can be translated into another media based upon the preference of the destination user as stored in the user's profile information. For large scale integrated network functionality, interfacing with voice messaging systems introduces a further complication for media preference translation in that large distributed network directories must be built and maintained, based upon numerical addressing, that are accessed utilizing DTMF signaling and the native protocols of the user system.
According to a further embodiment of the present invention, the communications system supports mailing list distribution of messages. According to this embodiment of the present invention, the communications system receives a me
Cohn Robert S.
Dimitroff Michael P.
Huch Alan T.
Kalbfleisch Carl W.
O'Neal Carlton C.
Avaya Technology Corp.
Escalante Ovidio
Tsang Fan
LandOfFree
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