Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Interaction with an external nontelephone network
Reexamination Certificate
1997-11-21
2001-08-28
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Interaction with an external nontelephone network
C370S352000, C709S203000, C709S228000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06282270
ABSTRACT:
The present invention relates to voice mail systems, and in particular to improving the way in which such voice mail systems can be accessed.
Voice mail systems (also termed voice messaging systems) attach to the telephone network, often via a PBX, and are used to store messages from incoming calls when the intended recipient is absent or otherwise engaged. The intended recipient can then listen to their stored messages at some future time. A voice mail system is generally implemented either on special purpose computer hardware, or else on a standard computer workstation equipped with a suitable telephony interface. Such voice mail systems are well-known; one example is the DirectTalkMail system, available from IBM Corporation, which operates in conjunction with the DirectTalk/6000 voice processing system (also available from IBM). Other examples of voice mail systems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,648 and EPA 0588576.
Also very well-known are computer-implemented electronic mail (e-mail) systems, such as Lotus Notes, available from Lotus Corporation, whereby computer files, primarily textual, may be sent from one computer user to another. Recently Lotus have announced a strategy whereby their e-mail will be available via the World Wide Web on the Internet.
Typically computer e-mail systems have been completely separate from voice mail systems, the former usually being accessed via a desktop computer, the latter via a telephone. However, in recent years various attempts have been made to provide a more unified mail system which can handle both textual and voice messages (such systems are sometimes referred to as multimedia systems). For example, Lotus Notes includes Phone Notes whereby voice information entered via a telephone may be captured into a Note which may then be treated in the same manner as any other Note. Essentially Phone Notes is a development environment which allows voice to be integrated into Notes applications; it does not provide a full-scale multi-user voice messaging system.
By contrast, WO87/07801 discloses an integrated system which combines a voice mail system and a computer e-mail system. In this integrated system, the user may designate one mail system (ie voice or computer) as the primary recipient for all messages. For example, if the computer is chosen as the primary recipient, then notifications of both telephone and e-mail incoming messages are provided at a desktop computer. Alternatively it is possible to chose to receive notifications of all messages via the voice mail system. In this latter case, a text to speech system may also be used to allow text (ie e-mail) messages to be accessed over the telephone. This approach is developed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,333,266, which teaches an integrated messaging system based on multiple servers for different media types. For example, voice mail is stored in an essentially conventional voice messaging system, whilst a separate server is used to store computer mail messages. The integrated messaging system maintains synchronised mail in-baskets for all media types, thereby allowing access to all mail, irrespective of media, from either a computer or a telephone.
Commercially available products which provide integrated or unified messaging include CallXpress3 DeskTop for Windows, available from Applied voice Technology Incorporated, and VMX DeskTop for Windows, available from VMX Incorporated (now part of Octel Communications Corporation). Both of these provide a graphical user interface (GUI) front end via a desktop computer into the voice mail system: for example, if a user selects a particular voice message on the screen, then the voice mail system is instructed to ring the telephone associated with that workstation and play the selected message.
Another multimedia messaging system is Intuity from AT&T. As described in Computer Reseller News, Nov. 28, 1994, p12, this is intended to allow messages to be converted from one format to another, so that users can listen to a fax message or read a voice mail message. As part of this development, AT&T will also provide access via a telephone to the World Wide Web, relying on speech recognition and text to speech software. It was further announced on Jan. 23, 1995 that Intuity would be integrated with the Lotus Notes e-mail system to allow messages to be managed either from a telephone or from a computer.
The typical desktop computer interface of such unified systems provides for much greater and more flexible information interchange between the user and the voice mail system than has hitherto been practicable. Thus the user no longer has to try to remember information and instructions played out from the voice mail system, rather this can be conveniently displayed on the computer screen. Likewise, user input commands to the voice mail system are no longer restricted to the conventional 12 touchtone (DTMF) keys on a telephone keypad, but rather can exploit the whole computer keyboard and full power of the GUI. An additional benefit of a unified mail system of course is that a user may process both voice mail and e-mail in the same session.
Nevertheless, there are problems with developing such computer interfaces for voice mail systems. Thus the big advantage of conventional voice mail systems is that a user can access them from a standard telephone anywhere in the world, because the telephone is both uniform and ubiquitous. By contrast, the computer world is full of heterogeneity; users are often equipped with a variety of computers even within a single organisation. For example, members of an engineering department may use UNIX based workstations, members of the marketing department may use Apple MacIntosh computers, and members of the finance and other departments may use IBM PC workstations, running the OS/2 operating system. For each different environment (UNIX, Apple, OS/2), a different front-end into the voice messaging system will need to be developed and supported. This is both time-consuming and costly. Furthermore, if the front ends differ between environments, users who change departments and thereby move from one environment to another, will need to be re-educated in the new environment. This again represents an additional and undesirable expense.
Another significant problem is that remote access to the voice mail system may be much more difficult via a computer network than through the telephone network. Thus maybe a user cannot or does not know how to navigate from a remote workstation through the computer network to the voice mail system, or to the computer which provides access to it. Furthermore, the remote workstation may not offer or support the GUI front end into the voice mail system which the user needs in order to effectively access any voice mail messages.
Accordingly, the invention provides a voice mail system, including:
means for storing voice mail messages for at least one user;
a server system, accessible via the Internet World Wide Web (WWW) from a WWW client terminal, and responsive to a request received from said WWW client terminal, for retrieving information relating to the stored voice mail messages, and for returning said information to the WWW client terminal.
The invention exploits the fact that a World Wide Web (WWW) front end is already available for all commercially significant platforms, being provided for general access to the WWW. Therefore, there is no need to develop or maintain separate front ends into the voice mail system, but rather generally available client software can be used. It is very likely that in future years WWW client software will be pre-loaded into almost all new computer workstations, so that access via the WWW will eventually be available from the vast majority of computers across the world. Furthermore, users are already familiar with the WWW, so that very little additional training is required.
It will also be appreciated that the Internet provides all the networking required to support the WWW, effectively transparently to the user. Thus a remote user, providing that they can remember a singl
Foster Roland G.
Herndon Jerry W.
International Business Machines Corp.
Tsang Fan
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