Shared Resource and Session Model Using Presence Data
A method implemented in a communication device, the method comprising receiving a context preference for a contact, storing the context preference, connecting to a communication session via the communication device, transmitting, for display at a second communication device, context information based on the context preference and presence information indicating that the communication device has connected to the communication session, and receiving from the second communication device a request from the contact to connect to the communication session.
This application is a divisional application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/655,731 filed on Oct. 19, 2012 by Francis Kurupacheril and Frederick P. Block and titled “Shared Resource and Session Model Using Presence Data,” which is incorporated by reference.
STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENTNot applicable.
REFERENCE TO A MICROFICHE APPENDIXNot applicable.
BACKGROUNDPresence and instant messaging (IM) clients are software applications that provide presence information sharing and IM services. The presence and IM clients may be installed on user devices (e.g., desktop or laptop computers, smartphones, or other mobile devices) or accessed using website browsers (e.g., via the Internet or other data access networks). The installed clients may be preinstalled on user devices, provided by service providers, or provided by third parties (e.g., software developers). Examples of presence and IM clients and applications include MICROSOFT LYNC, AVAYA ONE-X MOBILE, CISCO JABBER, SKYPE, and HUAWEI ESPACE.
IM is a form of communication, e.g., over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver. In “push” mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients, IM offers real-time direct written language-based online chat. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet. IM may address point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers. More advanced IM allows enhanced modes of communication, such as live voice or video calling, video chat, and inclusion of hyperlinks to media.
Presence information conveys the ability and/or willingness of a communication partner or contact to communicate. A user client (e.g., a software application) may publish a presence state of the user to indicate the user's current communication status. This published state informs others that wish to contact the user of his availability and willingness to communicate. Presence information can be displayed as an indicator icon on IM clients, typically from a choice of graphic symbols with easy-to-convey meanings and a list of corresponding text descriptions of each of the states. Common states on the user's availability are “free for chat”, “busy”, “away”, “do not disturb”, and “out to lunch”. Such states exist in many variations across different IM clients. Current standards support a choice of additional presence attributes that can be used for presence information, such as user mood, location, or free text status.
Current presence and IM clients show the current status of the contacts and allow users to communicate with each other via IM, for example via texting or chatting. However, these presence and IM clients do not support features to allow a user to request to join a contact involved in a current communication session (e.g., for a discussion, meeting, or presentation) or share communication session related information that may be of interest or benefit to the user.
SUMMARYIn one embodiment, the disclosure includes a method implemented in a communication device, the method comprising receiving a context preference for a contact, storing the context preference, connecting to a communication session via the communication device, transmitting, for display at a second communication device, context information based on the context preference and presence information indicating that the communication device has connected to the communication session, and receiving from the second communication device a request from the contact to connect to the communication session.
In another embodiment, the disclosure includes a communication device comprising a processor, a memory, a presence and instant messaging (IM) client stored in the memory that, when executed by the processor receives a context preference for a contact, stores the context preference to the memory, connects to a communication session, transmits context information to a second communication device, wherein the context information is based on the context preference and presence information indicating that the communication device has connected to the communication session, and receives from the second communication device a request from the contact to connect to the communication session.
In yet another embodiment, the disclosure includes a method implemented in a communication device, the method comprising receiving presence information and context information about a communication session involving a second communication device, displaying on a display of the communication device the presence information and the context information, and receiving a user input in response to the displaying of the presence and context information, transmitting, in response to the user input, a request to the second communication device to join the communication session in response to the displayed presence information and context information.
In yet another embodiment, the disclosure includes a database server comprising a memory, a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured to receive a context preference about a communication session involving a contact, store the context preference to the memory, receive context information regarding the communication session from a communication device, request the context preference from the memory, and determine whether the context preference and the context information match and if so send a notification of the communication session and an option to join the communication session to a second communication device.
These and other features will be more clearly understood from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and claims.
For a more complete understanding of this disclosure, reference is now made to the following brief description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings and detailed description, wherein like reference numerals represent like parts.
It should be understood at the outset that although an illustrative implementation of one or more embodiments are provided below, the disclosed systems and/or methods may be implemented using any number of techniques, whether currently known or in existence. The disclosure should in no way be limited to the illustrative implementations, drawings, and techniques illustrated below, including the exemplary designs and implementations illustrated and described herein, but may be modified within the scope of the appended claims along with their full scope of equivalents.
As shown in
The application 100 may provide the user a plurality of options associated with the contact. For example, the user may select a contact and trigger a menu 110 of options (e.g., using a right-click on a computer mouse), which may include options for IM, calling, and sending a file to the contact. However, the application 100 does not provide the user an option to join the conference, or to send a request to do so, while the conference is taking place. Thus, the user may not be capable of joining the conference using the application 100, e.g., if the user has not been invited by the contact to join this conference or has not received an invitation sent previously by the contact.
Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and apparatuses for providing means to share context information using a presence and IM client application. The context information may be communication session related information, such as in the form of keywords or brief descriptions about communication sessions, associated tasks, and/or discussed topics or goals. The communication session related information may also comprise communication session resources. The communication session resources may comprise any resources that may be used or accessed using the communication session, such as document files, power point slides, contact phone numbers, access codes, or other resource related information. The context information and other communication session related information may be displayed or made available to a user with the status of contacts in the user's contact list(s).
Additionally, the user may have the capability to join or send (to a contact) a request to join an ongoing communication session (e.g., a conference call) even if the user has not received an invitation to do so. The user may decide to join an ongoing communication session based on displayed context information associated with the communication session, which may be of interest or benefit to the user. The presence and IM client application may allow users to indicate or select context information of interest or benefit to users, and send users notices about scheduled or ongoing communication sessions that are associated with the indicated context information. These provided features may simplify user communications and improve user convenience to join communication sessions. The features may also save user time to search for or find communication sessions of interest or benefit to the users.
In an embodiment, a presence and IM client that may be used by a user may be configured to support the added features above. The presence and IM client may correspond to or may be part of an application that comprises similar features as the applications 100-500 and that may be installed and/or accessed by the user on a computer system, e.g., a desktop or a laptop computer or other suitable communication devices. Additionally, the application may be configured to inform users about contacts involved in current communication sessions, such as audio or video conferences or group chat discussions, which may be of interest or benefit to the users and/or may need the user's participation. The presence and IM client or application may also allow users to request to join such ongoing or current communication sessions. Allowing the users to join communication sessions of interest or benefit to the users and/or that need the user's participation may positively impact workplace efficiency, promote collaboration, and improve information exchange.
The user may identify sessions that may be of interest or benefit or that the user may need to participate in based on context information that may be displayed, for instance with the status of a contact that is in a current session. The term context information herein includes any information that may be entered or used to identify a topic, task, activity, or description of a communication session. For instance, the context information may include one or more words (e.g., keywords) or text that describes a topic, a task, an activity, a project, or a goal of the communication session. The context information associated with a current communication session may be entered by the user and/or the contact and displayed along with a contact's current status (e.g., in conference or session). In some embodiments, the context information may be previously selected or entered by the user and matched to the context information entered by the contact that participates in the session.
In addition to displaying the context information to the user, the presence and IM client may also allow the user to access shared resources for the session, such as document files (e.g., MICROSOFT WORD document files and/or ADOBE Portable Document Format (PDF) files), presentation slides (e.g., MICROSOFT POWERPOINT files), access codes and/or phone numbers to participate in the session, database access, access IDs, online links, bandwidth, storage, memory, and/or other resources that may be used in the session.
The presence and IM client may allow the users to be part of the ongoing or current sessions without receiving invitations, e.g., from any party or user contact that is part of the communication sessions. Further, the users may be notified of the sessions automatically without receiving an invitation from a party or contact that participates in the sessions. This also may enable the user to join the sessions without passing or using links (e.g., uniform resource locators (URLs)) or other session information via IM, texts, or emails to the users. When a user sees a communication session (e.g., an ongoing session) that the user wishes to join, the user may send a request to one or more parties or contacts in the session to join the session. The user may then join the session and participate in the discussion, e.g., after his request to join is accepted.
In
In
In
According to the presence and IM client scheme 720, at a first step, a meeting organizer may inform one or more participants to attend a communication session, such as an audio or video conference. At a second step, a user of the presence and IM client may be informed of the session when one or more contacts of the user attend the session and update their status accordingly. At a third step, the user may send a request to join the session to a contact that participates in the session (e.g., a video or voice conference or an IM session) and receive approval to join.
The operation of presence and IM system 730 is illustrated via an example. The example is similar to the one illustrated in
The presence and IM system 730 represents an example centralized architecture in which preference and context information are stored in a centralized database 760. Alternatively, a presence and IM system may be implemented as a decentralized, or peer-to-peer, architecture in which each communication device stores its own presence and context preferences. Even in the centralized architecture, presence and context preferences may be stored centrally (e.g., in a database server) and presence and context preferences for a user's contacts may be retrieved from a centralized repository (e.g., a database server) and loaded into the local memory of the user's communication device upon startup, reboot, or refresh of the communication device.
At step 805, a user (user A) may enter a context preference for a contact (user B or contact #1) into a first communication device. The user may set a list of context keywords and/or other session related information, e.g., topic reference numbers, cases numbers, documents, etc. that may be used in association with communications sessions (e.g., conferences) between multiple parties. The context preference may be transmitted to a database for storage. At step 810, the context preference may be received and stored at a database. At step 815, user A may connect to a communication session via the first communication device. The communication session may be, for example, an audio or video conference. At step 820, presence information conveying the presence of the user in the communication session (e.g., “on call”) and context information about the communication session indicating that the first communication device has connected to the communication session. The information may be transmitted to a database. At decision block 825, a context-aware comparison may be performed. More specifically, at decision block 825, a determination may be made whether user A has chosen to share context information about the current session with user B. If not, the flowchart ends. If user A has chosen to share context information, the flowchart proceeds to decision block 830. In decision block 830, a context-aware comparison is performed. That is, a decision is made whether a context description of the communication session matches context keywords indicated by user A with respect to user B. The comparison may be made in a database server, such as database server 760, or, if context information is saved locally, the comparison may be made in a communication device, such as terminal 740 or smart phone 795 as discussed earlier. If a match is not made, the flowchart ends. If a match is made, the flowchart proceeds to step 835.
In step 835, an alert or notification message about the communication session may be sent to user B with an option to join the communication session or to decline to join. The device that performs the comparison in decision block 830 may be the same device that sends the alert or notification message. In step 840, the presence and context information about user A and the communication session are received at a second communication device, e.g., a terminal used by user B. In step 845, the second communication device displays the presence and context information. In step 850, an input is received, e.g., at the second communication device, in response to the displaying of the presence and context information. The input may be received from user B after user B reads the presence and context information. Further, the input may be to select an option to join the communication session. In step 855, a request to join the communication session may be transmitted to the first communication device. The request may be transmitted from the second communication device in response to the input from user B. In step 860, an option may be presented to allow the second communication device to join the communication session. The option may be presented at the first communication device. Further, the presentation may be in the form of displaying the option on the first communication device. Next in decision block 865, a determination may be made whether the contact (e.g., user B) accepted the request from user A. If so, the flowchart proceeds to step 870, in which the user (user B) is allowed to join the communication session. If not, the flowchart ends.
The presence and IM client application and associated methods and schemes described above may be implemented on any general-purpose communication device, such as a computer or mobile communication device with sufficient processing power, memory resources, and network throughput capability to handle the necessary workload placed upon it.
The secondary storage 1004 is typically comprised of one or more disk drives or erasable programmable ROM (EPROM) and is used for non-volatile storage of data. Secondary storage 1004 may be used to store programs that are loaded into RAM 1008 when such programs are selected for execution. The ROM 1006 is used to store instructions and perhaps data that are read during program execution. ROM 1006 is a non-volatile memory device that typically has a small memory capacity relative to the larger memory capacity of secondary storage 1004. The RAM 1008 is used to store volatile data and perhaps to store instructions. Access to both ROM 1006 and RAM 1008 is typically faster than to secondary storage 1004. If the communication device implements a database server, such as database server 760, the database of information may be stored in memory, such as in secondary storage 1004 or RAM 1008.
I/O devices 1010 may include a video monitor, liquid crystal display (LCD), touch screen display, or other type of video display for displaying information, such as presence and IM information as taught herein. I/O devices 1010 may also include one or more keyboards, mice, or track balls, or other well-known input devices. I/O devices 1010 may also include a deskphone (such as deskphones 785 in
The network connectivity devices 1012 may serve as an output and/or input device of communication device 1000. The network connectivity devices 1012 may take the form of modems, modem banks, Ethernet cards, universal serial bus (USB) interface cards, serial interfaces, token ring cards, fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) cards, wireless local area network (WLAN) cards, radio transceiver cards such as code division multiple access (CDMA), global system for mobile communications (GSM), long-term evolution (LTE), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), and/or other air interface protocol radio transceiver cards, and other well-known network devices. These network connectivity devices 1012 may enable the processor 1002 to communicate with an Internet or one or more intranets.
It is understood that by programming and/or loading executable instructions onto the communication device 1000, at least one of the processor 1002, the ROM 1006, and the RAM 1008 are changed, transforming the communication device 1000 in part into a particular machine or apparatus, e.g., a presence and IM client, having the novel functionality taught by the present disclosure. It is fundamental to the electrical engineering and software engineering arts that functionality that can be implemented by loading executable software into a computer can be converted to a hardware implementation by well-known design rules. Decisions between implementing a concept in software versus hardware typically hinge on considerations of stability of the design and numbers of units to be produced rather than any issues involved in translating from the software domain to the hardware domain. Generally, a design that is still subject to frequent change may be preferred to be implemented in software, because re-spinning a hardware implementation is more expensive than re-spinning a software design. Generally, a design that is stable that will be produced in large volume may be preferred to be implemented in hardware, for example in an ASIC, because for large production runs the hardware implementation may be less expensive than the software implementation. Often a design may be developed and tested in a software form and later transformed, by well-known design rules, to an equivalent hardware implementation in an application specific integrated circuit that hardwires the instructions of the software. In the same manner as a machine controlled by a new ASIC is a particular machine or apparatus, likewise a computer that has been programmed and/or loaded with executable instructions may be viewed as a particular machine or apparatus.
At least one embodiment is disclosed and variations, combinations, and/or modifications of the embodiment(s) and/or features of the embodiment(s) made by a person having ordinary skill in the art are within the scope of the disclosure. Alternative embodiments that result from combining, integrating, and/or omitting features of the embodiment(s) are also within the scope of the disclosure. Where numerical ranges or limitations are expressly stated, such express ranges or limitations should be understood to include iterative ranges or limitations of like magnitude falling within the expressly stated ranges or limitations (e.g., from about 1 to about 10 includes, 2, 3, 4, etc.; greater than 0.10 includes 0.11, 0.12, 0.13, etc.). For example, whenever a numerical range with a lower limit, R1, and an upper limit, Ru, is disclosed, any number falling within the range is specifically disclosed. In particular, the following numbers within the range are specifically disclosed: R=R1+k*(Ru−R1), wherein k is a variable ranging from 1 percent to 100 percent with a 1 percent increment, i.e., k is 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent, 5 percent, . . . , 50 percent, 51 percent, 52 percent, . . . , 95 percent, 96 percent, 97 percent, 98 percent, 99 percent, or 100 percent. Moreover, any numerical range defined by two R numbers as defined in the above is also specifically disclosed. The use of the term about means±10% of the subsequent number, unless otherwise stated. Use of the term “optionally” with respect to any element of a claim means that the element is required, or alternatively, the element is not required, both alternatives being within the scope of the claim. Use of broader terms such as comprises, includes, and having should be understood to provide support for narrower terms such as consisting of, consisting essentially of, and comprised substantially of. Accordingly, the scope of protection is not limited by the description set out above but is defined by the claims that follow, that scope including all equivalents of the subject matter of the claims. Each and every claim is incorporated as further disclosure into the specification and the claims are embodiment(s) of the present disclosure. The discussion of a reference in the disclosure is not an admission that it is prior art, especially any reference that has a publication date after the priority date of this application. The disclosure of all patents, patent applications, and publications cited in the disclosure are hereby incorporated by reference, to the extent that they provide exemplary, procedural, or other details supplementary to the disclosure.
While several embodiments have been provided in the present disclosure, it should be understood that the disclosed systems and methods might be embodied in many other specific forms without departing from the spirit or scope of the present disclosure. The present examples are to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive, and the intention is not to be limited to the details given herein. For example, the various elements or components may be combined or integrated in another system or certain features may be omitted, or not implemented.
In addition, techniques, systems, subsystems, and methods described and illustrated in the various embodiments as discrete or separate may be combined or integrated with other systems, modules, techniques, or methods without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. Other items shown or discussed as coupled or directly coupled or communicating with each other may be indirectly coupled or communicating through some interface, device, or intermediate component whether electrically, mechanically, or otherwise. Other examples of changes, substitutions, and alterations are ascertainable by one skilled in the art and could be made without departing from the spirit and scope disclosed herein.
Claims
1. A method implemented in a communication device, the method comprising:
- receiving presence information and context information about a communication session involving a second communication device;
- displaying on a display of the communication device the presence information and the context information; and
- receiving an input in response to the displaying of the presence and context information;
- transmitting, in response to the input, a request to the second communication device to join the communication session in response to the displayed presence information and context information.
2. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a preference for context information, wherein the displaying is performed only if the preference matches the received context information.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the presence information comprises one or more keywords about the status of a contact, and wherein the context information comprises one or more keywords about the communication session.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the context information comprises one or more keywords or text that describes a topic, a task, an activity, a project, or a goal of the communication session.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the context information comprises one or more resources associated with the communication session and that are used or accessed using the communication session, including document files, presentation point slides, contact phone numbers, access codes, or other resource related information.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication session is a video conference session, a voice conference session, an instant messaging (IM) session, or a web-based collaboration session.
7. A database server comprising:
- a memory;
- a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured to:
- receive a context preference about a communication session involving a contact;
- store the context preference to the memory;
- receive context information regarding the communication session from a communication device;
- request the context preference from the memory; and
- determine whether the context preference and the context information match and if so send a notification of the communication session and an option to join the communication session to a second communication device.
8. The database server of claim 7, wherein the communication device is a presence and instant messaging (IM) server, and wherein the context preference originated from a third communication device.
9. The database server of claim 8, wherein the second communication device is the presence and IM server, wherein the context information originated from the third communication device.
10. The database server of claim 9, wherein the context preference comprises text that describes a topic, a task, an activity, a project, or a goal of the communication session, and wherein the context information comprises second text that describes a topic, a task, an activity, a project, or a goal of the communication session, and wherein determining whether the context preference and the context information match comprises comparing the text and the second text.
Type: Application
Filed: Aug 2, 2016
Publication Date: Nov 24, 2016
Inventors: Francis Kurupacheril (Cupertino, CA), Frederick P. Block (Westminster, CO)
Application Number: 15/226,083