Abstract: In one embodiment, a user paired controller communication device may pair with a user paired server communication device. The user paired controller communication device may direct the user paired server communication device to execute a first mode communication session of a multimodal conversation, such as a voice session. The user paired controller communication may execute a second mode communication session of the multimodal conversation, such as an instant messaging session.

Abstract: Techniques to manage digital telephones are described. An apparatus may comprise a digital telephone management component having a telephone interface module operative to receive security information in the form of a personal identification number (PIN) for an operator or device. The digital telephone management component may also comprise a telephone security module communicatively coupled to the telephone interface module, the telephone security module operative to receive encrypted security credentials from a computing device, and decrypt the encrypted security credentials with the PIN. The digital telephone management component may further comprise a telephone authentication module communicatively coupled to the telephone security module, the telephone authentication module operative to authenticate the digital telephone using the security credentials. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Abstract: A facility for providing extensible alert types is described. The facility includes an endpoint component that has an associated application, an alert handler component provided by the application for handling received messages and providing alerts to the application, and a message transport component that receives a message, determines whether the message contains an alert, locates an alert handler to handle the alert, and provides a portion of the received message to the alert handler component so that the alert handler component can handle the alert. The facility can receive a request to register an alert handler, add an indication of the alert handler in a mapping data structure and, upon receiving a message containing an alert, identify an alert handler to handle the alert contained in the message.

Abstract: A facility is described for managing parallel requests in a communications environment having devices or applications (“request handlers”) that support serial and parallel message processing. In various embodiments, the facility receives messages directed to a recipient from an application and sends a first message to the recipient without sending subsequently received messages to the recipient. Upon receiving a response from the recipient to the first message, the facility determines whether the recipient supports parallel or serial message processing. When the recipient supports parallel message processing, the facility sends the subsequently received messages to the recipient without awaiting a response to a message before sending another message. When the recipient supports serial message processing, the facility sends a subsequent message after receiving a response to a previously sent message.

Abstract: Technology to facilitate collaborative communications is provided. The technology may include, for example, operations directed to publishing and subscribing services. The operations may facilitate publication of data derived from multiple data types as well as subscription to selectively filtered views of published data. Published data may be updated, and notification of various events and services may be provided.

Abstract: An architecture for developing new media activities and deploying the newly developed activities in a reusable collaboration session is provided. The architecture comprises a base collaboration session, a base activity class, and a well defined contract between the base activity class and the collaboration session. The base collaboration session provides signaling plane functionality, including session management services and media negotiation services. The base activity class provides the base class support needed to build or develop activities derived from the base activity class. The well defined contract enables the base activity class and the base collaboration session to work together to hide the details of the signaling plane from the derived activities.

Abstract: An architecture for an extensible real-time collaboration system is provided. The architecture presents a unified application program interface for writing application programs that use communications protocols. The architecture has activity objects, endpoint objects, and multiple media stacks. These objects may use various communications protocols, such as Session Initiation Protocol or Real-Time Transport Protocol to send and receive messages. The activity objects, endpoint objects, and multiple media stacks may each have one or more APIs that an application developer can use to access or provide collaboration-related functionality. These objects map the API to the underlying implementation provided by other objects. Using the activity objects enables a developer to provide less application logic than would otherwise be necessary to provide complex collaboration services.