Abstract: The present invention relates to a call forwarding system for forwarding telephone calls to a target telephone not having a direct dial number. The call forwarding system includes an intelligent forwarding unit for storing a forwarding direct dial number and the extension number for accessing the target telephone and for connecting the received forwarded call to the target telephone, a voice response unit including a DTMF decoder for receiving the forwarded telephone call and for decoding the extension number of the target telephone. A call connecting unit directly connects the in-coming telephone call to the target telephone.

Abstract: A routing method for an information distribution system, such as an automatic communications distribution system, allows substantial content freedom in the formulation of a message to the system. The messages are converted to a computer-searchable format and are subjected to content analysis to identify skills advantageous to responding to the messages. In one application, the incoming message is a facsimile transmission that is converted to computer-generated text information using an optical character recognition module. The freeform incoming message may also be a voice mail message converted using speech recognition techniques, or may be a video transmission, electronic mail or a Webpage referral. In an application of the method and system that includes a response from an agent of the system, resume data indicative of proficiencies of the agents with respect to skills advantageous to processing the communications are correlated with the identified desired skills for a particular incoming communication.