Avaya Inc.

Avaya Technology LLC

Albert J Baker

Eileen Patricia Rose

Frederick Peter Block

Hal B Zenner

Scott Allan Schell

John Joseph Sangermano

Ezra Raphael Gilbert

Charles Cruse Hayden

Janis Rae Putman

Glen George Freundlich

Pankaj Omprakash Agrawal

Lynn Kershner

David Butler

Lincy Scaria

A method is disclosed that provides a way to manage the registrations of telecommunications endpoints, and to prioritize those registered endpoints, or 'contacts,' that belong to a user, without some of the disadvantages in the prior art. The technique of the illustrative embodiment, which is referred to as 'contact priority reordering,' prioritizes the contacts that are associated with a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) public address of a user, without having to modify any endpoints. Moreover, the technique is interoperable with any SIP endpoint. The technique can be regarded as a reordering process because it overrides any endpoint ordering that occurs at a registrar server as a consequence of the registrations and re-registrations of the individual endpoints. Advantageously, the technique prioritizes the contacts that are associated with a particular public address without requiring that any changes be made to the registrar server&#x2014;or to any other SIP servers.

Contact priority reordering

A technique is disclosed that enables one or more telecommunications endpoints to subscribe to a conferencing system and to be notified of one or more conferencing events. As part of the conferencing system of the illustrative embodiment, a conference invitation server maintains information on all of the conferences that are scheduled to occur on the conferencing system, including (i) the addresses of the identified participants for each call and (ii) the conference identifier that the server generates for each call. When a conference call is going to begin, the server sends out notifications to all endpoints that are subscribed to the conference. If there are participants who are not subscribed to the conference, then alternative mechanisms for notifying participants can be used. Each subscribed endpoint then transmits a request to join the conference&#x2014;either via user interaction or automatically&#x2014;providing the conference identifier as part of the join request.

Coordinated invitations to a conference call

Methods and apparatus are provided for efficient presentation of content over a network to a visually impaired user. Requests for content from a visually impaired user are processed by observing behavior of the user in connection with the requests; determining if the observed behavior constitutes a behavior pattern; and generating one or more rules based on the observed behavior that dynamically restructure content presented on at least one web page such that previously selected portions of the content is presented to the visually impaired user prior to other portions of the content. If one or more rules associated with a visually impaired user are applicable to requested content, wherein the rules are based on previously observed behavior of the user; and the requested content is restructured based on the one or more applicable rules such that previously selected portions of the content is presented to the visually impaired user prior to other portions of the content.

Method and apparatus for efficient presentation of content over a network to a visually impaired user

A technique is disclosed that enables a set of information to be represented by data packets, where those data packets can then be distributed as needed throughout the telecommunications system that uses the data. The data packet of the illustrative embodiment is an autonomous encapsulation of data, a subsection of a data model at a certain time in relation to other data in the system at another time. The data packet is identified at a particular time and value with a globally unique identifier. Relationships of the data packet to other data packets are made known by using references to the other packets. As a result, referenced data packets are retrieved throughout the system based on their relationships to each other. Whenever a data packet is transmitted or received, each node involved in the transmission applies rules that determine where the data has to be transmitted to and what to do with the data when received.

Data distribution in a distributed telecommunications network

A technique is disclosed for interfacing business processes with telephony functions. Particularly, an orchestration engine is interposed between a business process engine that executes business processes and an enterprise telecommunications network that executes telephony functions. Acting as an intermediary between the business process engine and the telecommunications network, the orchestration engine decouples the atomic telephony functions that are required for a business application from the business logic that is used in features that comprise one or more business processes. Thus, a new protocol state, feature, or algorithm change is isolated to a single and easy-to-develop location in software.

Orchestration engine as an intermediary between telephony functions and business processes

A technique is disclosed for receiving call-control data, often from a variety of sources; processing the data into a format, content, and size that is appropriate for a telecommunications endpoint; and transmitting the processed call-control data to the endpoint. The personal profile manager of the illustrative embodiment is what first acquires the call-control data, which includes a dialing plan. The manager also reformats the call-control data and deletes redundant data. Subsequently, when a request is received from an endpoint, the personal profile manager further processes the call-control data and then transmits, to the requesting endpoint, the portion of the processed data that is appropriate for the endpoint. Transmitting the call-control data to the endpoint offloads some of the processing from the supporting call-processing server, as the data that constitute call-control rules that are used by the endpoint to make call-control decisions.

Dialing plan information as provided to a telecommunications endpoint

A method and system are disclosed that enable performance improvements by reallocating to client endpoints at least some of the feature functionality of a server. Each logical user in the system is represented by his own private domain of endpoint entities, from which an endpoint is selected to serve as a super peer to represent the user to the centralized server. Furthermore, one or more endpoints in the private domain of endpoints handle some of the telecommunications features that the server otherwise would have handled. An endpoint that needs to access a particular feature determines the best endpoint to handle the feature, in part by querying the other endpoints in the private domain. If the querying endpoint wants to subscribe to a feature that is located at an endpoint in the private domain, the querying endpoint interacts with the relevant endpoint without requiring the further assistance of a server.

Distributed handling of telecommunications features in a hybrid peer-to-peer system of endpoints

A method and apparatus to arrange for and to set up a conference call are disclosed. The party who arranges for a conference call provides all of the details of the conference call to a conferencing server through an encoded public address. The arranging party's telecommunications endpoint then transmits the encoded, initial public address to the server. The encoded public address is encoded with (i) the public address for each participant, which can be a group address or an individual address, and (ii) one or more commands that can be used to control the conference call, and is encoded in such a way so that it is still routable to the conferencing server. Because the encoded public address comprises all of the participants, either the conferencing server or an external proxy server can recursively retrieve all of the constituent public and contact addresses to set up the call.

Setting up a conference call with a hashed address

A method is disclosed that enables an improvement in the scalability of a centralized server by reallocating to the client endpoints some, but not all, of the feature functionality of the server. Each logical user in the system is represented by his own private domain of endpoint entities, from which an endpoint is selected to serve as a super peer to represent the user to the centralized server. Furthermore, a designated endpoint is selected, also from the private domain of devices, to handle some of the telecommunications features that the server otherwise would have handled. Each endpoint in the private domain is permitted to have limited direct access to the server, typically for the purposes of registering and subscribing to features, in addition to and in contrast with the indirect access through the super peer. During the subscribing process, the server redirects a subscribing endpoint to the designated endpoint that is handling the feature.

Growing community of inventors

Eatontown, NJ, United States of America

Albert J Baker