Abstract: A telephone system comprising switching circuitry configured for coupling a call to a telephone extension coupled to the system, voice processing circuitry configured for automatically interacting with the call, a microprocessor, a first data bus connected between the microprocessor and the switching circuitry, and a second data bus connected between the microprocessor and the voice processing circuitry.

Abstract: An information handling system comprises a IP network connecting a hub to a multimedia server and the hub to a data server, and the hub to an IP telephony device that is then coupled to a network device. When a telephone in one local area network within a wide area network has a change in its status, such as going off-hook, a status message will be sent to an associated extension within another local area network connected to the wide area network to thereby cause a status indicator to notify the user at the remote extension that the telephone the first local area network has had a status change.