Abstract: Users of network based software applications typically interact with an application via a command line interface or a menu interface. Conventional voice-driven communication threads rely on a dedicated communication line (connection) to maintain a session context, or state, between a user and an application for the duration of a session. Such state information enables the application to reference a session context for the session duration, and employ the session context to maintain a state from previous atomic messages sent and received between the device and the application. By maintaining and referencing a session context indicative of previous messages, an application identifies an atomic message as corresponding to a particular session context, and employs the session context to process the message within the context, or environment, defined by the previous messages in the session.

Abstract: An integrated messaging system uses existing messaging equipment to receive, store, retrieve and manage messages in media types and formats appropriate to each existing system using protocols which are specific to that system. Two or more systems are tightly coupled in that a message received in one system can be accessed from all systems. Coordination between messaging systems is achieved by a synchronizer system which periodically connects to each system by means of a standard interface and insures that messages created or received in one system are distributed or identified in all other messaging systems. Thus, the messaging systems can operate together even though they have different user interfaces, storage designs and formats and access and routing protocols. In one embodiment, a message received in one system is copied to the other system. In another embodiment, the header information in a message is preserved in a message created in the other system, but the message is not copied.

Abstract: An integrated messaging system uses existing messaging systems to receive, store, retrieve and manage messages in media types and formats appropriate to each existing system using protocols which are specific to that system. Two or more systems are tightly coupled in that a message received in one system can be accessed from all other systems. Coordination between messaging systems is achieved by a synchronizer system running in one of the existing servers or in a stand-alone server. The synchronizer comprises a plurality of threads which sequentially examine corresponding mailboxes in each messaging system and update the message states in each system so that all message states correspond. In order to determine whether a message state has changed, the synchronizer maintains a state database which stores the state of each message in all messaging systems which are connected to the synchronizer.