Abstract: Voice mail, email, fax and personal calendar systems are integrated allowing for the automatic updating of voice mail and email responses to received telephone calls and emails indicating that the receiver of the telephone call/email is out of the office, temporarily unavailable, etc. For received telephone calls, a determination is made as to whether the call was received during or outside of normal working hours, and if the person receiving the call is still engaged beyond a previous entered time period for providing an appropriate message to the caller. The determination is also made as to whether the received call is an “inside” or “outside” call, e.g., originating within or outside of the office or organization being called, and a predetermined response is provided depending upon where the call originated.

Abstract: Apparatus and method for simultaneously providing multiple telephone-type services to any/all POTS-type devices on a single wire pair at a user premises. The present invention provides for the ability to add separately addressable POTS devices on a single service loop. This can be accomplished in at least two ways: first by the use of a multipoint protocol or second by Frequency Division Multiplexing.

Abstract: A distributed voice mail system in a network includes a server in a control layer of the network and one or more media gateways in a connectivity layer of the network, wherein the server controls resources in the media gateways to provide distributed voice mail services.

Abstract: A technique for recognizing telephone numbers and other information embedded in voice messages stored in a telephone voice messaging system. A voice recognition system is coupled to the telephone voice messaging system. A voice message stored in the voice messaging system is transferred to the voice recognition system. The voice recognition system segments the voice message and then searches the segments for a predetermined speech reference model (grammar) which is expected to contain information of importance to the recipient of the message. In a preferred embodiment, the predetermined is a numeric grammar which specifies a sequence of numbers occurring in the voice message. In alternate embodiments, the grammar specifies a date, a time, an address, and so forth, and can specify more than one such type of information. The grammar can be modified or selected by the recipient of the voice message so that the voice recognition system searches for information of particular interest to the recipient.

Abstract: An editing system for real-time remote transcription, such as may be used by deaf or hearing impaired individuals, displays transcribed text on a screen prior to transmission so that a human call assistant may identify words being held in a buffer by their spatial location on the screen to initiate a correction of those words either through speech or text entry.

Abstract: An external accessory is added to an automatic call director to ensure first in first out operation for connection to primary resources when secondary resources are accessed prior to primary resources. A controller intercepts resource requests for the call director and manages an auxiliary queue to provide first in first out operation. The resource requests are returned to the call director queue once first in first out is guaranteed.

Abstract: A method and system which utilize a graphical user interface to identify potential participants in a teleconference, specify a user-controlled dial-up/hang-up order, and monitor the status of participants to the teleconference. The method and system receive conference commands from a World Wide Web (WWW) browser and translate the conference commands into commands that control a telephone bridge.

Abstract: A notification architecture utilizes multiple processes configured for managing notification operations based on reception of SMTP-based messages within IMAP based message stores. The notification architecture includes a notification process, configured for receiving notification messages for respective subscribers from messaging sources according to a prescribed open protocol such as Internet Protocol. The notification process accesses subscriber profile information from an open protocol-based subscriber directory based on the received notification messages. The subscriber directory is controlled by a directory management process, configured for storing subscriber notification preference information in an open protocol-based subscriber directory (such as LDAP). The directory management process stores, as a first object class, notification attributes for respective notification types, each notification attribute specifying for the corresponding notification type a corresponding notification device tag.

Abstract: An agent station for a call-in center has a telephone for an agent's use connected by a communication link with a computer workstation adapted for providing voice extensions, including one or more of call recording, playback of pre-recorded voice files to the telephone during a telephone call, and voice-activated functions. The agent station can be adapted to a call-in center wherein the computer workstations are connected on a local area network (LAN) together with a computer processor running a telephony server (T-Server). In some embodiments the T-Server may provide voice extensions in conjunction with a database accessible on the LAN.

Abstract: A telephone system is operatively coupled to a private automatic branch exchange (PABX) system and to a voice mail system, where the telephone system permits a user to retrieve recorded voice messages from the voice mail system. The telephone system includes one or more telephones, where each telephone further includes a handset, a message waiting indicator configured to inform the user that the voice message is pending with the voice mail system, a message retrieval key for retrieving the voice message from the voice mail system, and an audio speaker configured to provide the user with audio output corresponding to the voice message. A single action by the user of activating the message retrieval key causes the voice message to be retrieved and the audio speaker to be automatically activated such that the voice message is output on the audio speaker without the user lifting the handset.

Abstract: In a portable telephone set, an input audio signal such as an audio signal is received through a microphone (111), and is then amplified by an amplifier (112). The output of the latter (112) is applied through an analog-to-digital converter (113) to a DSP (301), where it is compressed and stored in a memory (303) with the aid of a CPU (302), or it is stored therein as it is. Here, an audio signal from outside which is stored in the portable telephone set can be used as a calling sound or alarm sound. Therefore, selection of calling sounds or alarm sounds in the portable telephone set of the invention is wider than in the conventional one.

Abstract: A method and system for providing unified messages services to a subscriber. The subscriber utilizes an active interface embedded in an e-mail notification to control delivery of a non-literal, single media or multimedia message to the subscriber. Such a non-literal message includes, but is not limited to, any of a hyperlink-based message, a voicemail message, a facsimile, and a video clip. The active interface provides access to communications-related services as well, including access to stock/options trading and bill payment.

Abstract: The invention concerns a process and a system for placing and reading an advertisement. In order to place and read advertisements without undue delay and to reach the largest possible group of interested people with a published advertisement, a process is proposed that is characterised by the following steps: dialling of a specified directory number of a service computer in a telecommunications (TC) network (1) and making a connection to the service computer (2); selection of a desired category of advertisement (4); and input of advertising copy (6) into or output of advertising copy (12) from an advertisement memory (10) allocated to the selected category.

Abstract: A system and method that enables a calling party to verify delivery and/or cancel stored facsimiles. This advance is achieved by a voice mail system that receives incoming telephone calls and compares an incoming caller ID with caller ID's stored in conjunction with previous faxes. If a caller ID of the incoming call matches a caller ID in the database, (i.e., the calling party has previously left a fax) then the calling party is presented with a menu of options. The menu may include determining whether the called party has accessed the voice mail system but did not print or delete the fax message, and if the fax has not already been deleted, the calling party may delete the fax.

Abstract: In an acoustic echocanceller (6), an estimate of an echo signal is determined by an adaptive filter (10) and is subtracted from the input signal by a subtracter (14). The spectrum estimator (12) determines the frequency spectrum of the estimate of the echo signal, and the filter (16) filters the output signal of the subtracter (14) with a filter having a transfer function dependent on the spectrum determined by the estimator (12). The use of this combination results in a substantial improvement of the suppression of the echo signal.

Abstract: A method and system are disclosed for providing an enhanced call waiting announcement to a called party that is busy on a first call and receives a second call. Information provided by a second calling party is recorded and played back to the called party after the first call is over. The called party is not interrupted during the duration of the first call.

Abstract: A directory service, containing unique identifiers (e.g., telephone numbers) and related Internet address(es), accessible through the Internet. An Internet-enabled communication system, such as IP-PBX or voice mail system, accepts a telephone number as a destination address. It then contacts the directory service and requests the Internet address related to that telephone number. The communication system uses the Internet address to set up a delivery path via the Internet to the destination. Thus, all time-dependent charges normally associated with message delivery by the telephone network can be avoided.

Abstract: A method and system for providing a telephone caller information assistance such as driving directions from a starting location to a destination location. To obtain information assistance, the caller places a telephone call to access the system. If the geographical location of the caller can be determined by an automatic location identification system it is displayed on an operator console where the caller's request is transferred to be handled by a live operator. The operator receives the caller's destination request and queries the system for the street route driving instructions to the requested destination. After obtaining the street route driving instructions, the call can be transferred to an audio box having an interactive user interface capable of replaying the desired information to the caller. In an illustrative embodiment, the interactive user interface is capable providing functions to stop, start, pause, and replay the information to the caller.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for storing a voice message. The method includes the steps of storing a coded representation of the voice message in a block of memory associated with the voice message and sized to correspond to the size of the coded representation, retrieving the coded representation to play the voice message to a user, compressing the coded representation to produce a compressed representation of the voice message, the compressed representation having a lesser size than the coded representation, after the coded representation has been retrieved, and storing the compressed representation of the message in the block of memory in place of the coded representation.

Abstract: A voice verification system (1) has a verification server layer (55) providing centralized verification for multiple service providers in geographically spread locations. Each service provider has an IVR (41) using a C++ DLL API (43) to communicate with a verification server (56, 57) via ISPs (45) and a switching system (50). Each API (43) dynamically determines an optimum ISP/server socket to minimize a verification cycle time. The switching system (50) has a router and two-stage switch combination with firewalls to provide optimum resilience in paths to the server (56, 57).