Lucent Technologies Inc.

Alcatel Lucent

Other

Avaya Inc.

Bharat Kumar

Richard Baxter Hull

Gang Zhou

Daniel Francis Lieuwen

Vinod Anupam

Juliana Freire Silva

Francois Llirbat

Gregory L Anderson

Guozhu Dong

Jianwen Su

Andrew Derek Flockhart

Reinhard P Klemm

Tin Kam Ho

Stanley T Chow

Yuri J Breitbart

Anwar I Walid

Eric Simon

Vijay Kumar Gurbani

Timothy G Griffin

Suhasini Sabnis

Paulo A Santos

Robert K Dinoff

Kevin George Irwig

Haobo Ren

Victoria Hiering

Luis Nieto

Aniruddha Gokhale

Various exemplary embodiments relate to a method and related network element including one or more of the following: receiving a plurality of advertisement messages via the communications network, each advertisement message of the plurality of advertisement messages including a set of meta-information which describes the content of an advertisement associated with the advertisement message; determining whether each advertisement message is relevant to the user by comparing the set of meta-information to a set of user preferences associated with the user, the set of user preferences stored locally on the user node; when an advertisement message is determined to not be relevant to the user, discarding the advertisement message; and when an advertisement message is determined to be relevant to the user, providing the user with access to the advertisement associated with the advertisement message.

Privacy-counscious advertising

A tone advisor, a tone assisting system and a method of associating tones with callers. In one embodiment the method includes: (1) monitoring calls to and from a user, (2) obtaining information based on the calls and (3) categorizing a caller associated with at least one of the calls into a contact group according to the information and (4) assigning a genre of tones to the contact group.

Tone advisor, a tone assisting system and a method of associating tones with callers

A customer relationship management system is disclosed for matching a given work item with an agent. The system includes a database to hold customer information, agent information, and system information, and a network contact center server operative to receive the given work item from the customer and route it to the agent based at least in part on the information in the database. The network contact center server is configured to control the conduction of an automated web dialogue with the customer via a separate web server and is further configured to control the conduction of an automated voice dialogue with the customer via an interactive voice response system. The automated web dialogue and the automated voice dialogue are thereby both conductable under the control of the network contact center server.

Customer relationship management system with network contact center server configured to control automated web and voice dialogues

The present invention is directed to a method and system for routing contacts in a contact center based on a number of factors including the value or nature of items in an order of the customer associated with the contact. The invention is particularly useful in E-commerce web-sites in which electronic orders are generated by the customer.

Routing based on the contents of a shopping cart

An object-focused workflow system for processing a received object in accordance with a declarative workflow specification. The specification includes modules and attributes, where module execution results in the evaluation of attributes, and may include the initiation of a side-effect action performed by an external component. Whether modules are to be executed for a particular received object is determined by associated enabling conditions. Attributes may be evaluated in accordance with computation rules and a combining policy, where the computation rules specify how values are to be contributed to an attribute, and the combining policy indicates how those contributed values are combined in order to assign a value to the attribute. Tasks in the workflow system may be executed eagerly in order to improve the performance of the workflow system. The eager evaluation of tasks includes the determination of whether such tasks are eligible for eager evaluation, and whether the tasks are unneeded or necessary for the processing of the received event. Workflows which satisfy described design properties allow for improved algorithms for the determination of the whether tasks are eligible, eager, and/or necessary. A graphical user interface is provided for displaying a representation of the evaluation status of the modules and attributes during workflow execution.

Eager evaluation of tasks in a workflow system

Techniques are provided for use in accordance with such systems as web sites operating electronic commerce (e-commerce) applications, interactive voice response (IVR) systems and workflow systems for providing automated monitoring of user activity and personalized action taking based on such activity, in accordance with an on-line decision support mechanism which combines formal and heuristic reasoning. In a web-based system, for example, the on-line decision support provided in accordance with the invention can be used in a wide variety of e-commerce applications requiring automated, real-time, intelligent interventions, including targeted promotions and discounts, assisting with navigation through self-help material, supporting dynamic price negotiations, and even selecting large portions of page content.

Methods and apparatus for automated monitoring and action taking based on decision support mechanism

An executable shopping list (ESL) enables a user browsing an affiliate Web site's Web page to order, with a single action, a bundle of multiple items offered for sale by the affiliate's associated merchant Web site, wherein the bundle is one that is not offered or available for sale as a bundle to on-line visitors who directly access the merchant's Web site server. By selecting a link on the affiliate's Web page, the ESL is executed, thereby automatically loading the bundle of multiple items on that list into a virtual shopping cart at the merchant's Web site on behalf of the user. The virtual shopping cart, filled with the multiple items, is then returned to the user's browser for completion of the checkout procedure by the user. ESLs can be implemented on the affiliate site's side using what is referred to as smart bookmark technology, which records for later playback, the multiple steps required to load each item on the list into a shopping cart at the merchant's Web server. Alternatively, ESLs cam be implemented on the merchant's site side using the merchant's Web server's infrastructure. A discount can be optionally associated with the offer to purchase the multiple items in the bundle. ESLs are also applied to permission marketing where a merchant can bundle a group of items together and electronically offer that bundle to one or more customers who have agreed to receive such merchandising offers.

Applications of executable shopping lists

A personal Web view is created that includes a plurality of Web clippings. Each Web clipping contains information from a user-selected Web page, which can be essentially any Web page that is accessible on any Web server. In creating the page, the user loads a personalization applet into his browser and retrieves each Web page of interest. The applet then generates an access script for automatically accessing that Web page and the user specifies the attributes of the Web clipping derived from that Web page. A specification of the Web view is then stored in a file. When the Web view specification is later replayed, the Web page for each Web clipping is retrieved and the specified information is extracted. The plural Web clippings are then displayed in a browser in accordance with the specified layout.

Method and apparatus for web-site-independent personalization from multiple sites having user-determined extraction functionality

Shortcuts to Web pages that require multiple steps to be retrieved are enabled by means of a smart bookmark. A smart bookmark is a stored sequence of browsing steps performed by a user, that have been recorded in a transparent manner and which can be automatically played and replayed later when the smart bookmark is accessed. When a user elects to create a smart bookmark, a Java recorder-player applet is invoked that starts the recording process. When the recording process is started and an initial URL is inputted by the user, the responsive Web page at that URL downloaded into the browser is modified to attach event handlers to each element in that page that is associated with actions that the user may take. Each user's click, link traversal to another URL, or input of values to those elements on a form submission are automatically recorded as part of the smart bookmark under creation. The resultant information at each step is recorded in a file. When the smart bookmark is later accessed, the recorder-player Java applet reads the file, and the sequence of recorded steps is played back, including information associated with all link traversals and form submissions. During playback, each intermediate Web page optionally can be displayed in the user's browser, or only the last page can be displayed. Further, during playback, transitions between successive steps can be automatic or can require an input from the user before a next step in the sequence is made.

Method for creating and playing back a smart bookmark that automatically retrieves a requested Web page through a plurality of intermediate Web pages

Data item evaluation based on the combination of multiple factors

Declarative workflow system supporting side-effects

Computer and telecommunication systems employing workflow (contact flow) processes are enhanced by employing dynamic random differential treatment of so-called instances (contacts) entering the workflow (contact flow). This is realized, for example, by associating a prescribed distinguishing function with the workflow (contact flow), and to use a value given by this prescribed distinguishing function in one or more decisions relating to how the object instance (contact) should be processed. Each decision is essentially a choice between two or more paths in a workflow (contact flow), or a choice between two or more workflows (contact flows). For example, the prescribed distinguishing function could associate a distinguishing value having an integer value between 1 and 100 with object instances (contacts), and a selection function for making a decision to use one or more of a plurality of workflows (contact flows) is related to a prescribed parameter &ldquo;x&rdquo; that has a value from 0 to 100. For example, each object instance (contact) with a prescribed distinguishing value&lE;x is routed to a first of the plurality of possible treatments and each object instance (contact) with distinguishing value>x is routed to at least another of the plurality of possible treatments. Additionally, dynamic control is utilized over the parameters employed by the selection function that control whether object instances (contacts) are routed to the first treatment or to some other treatment. For the preceding example, this is accomplished by permitting dynamic control over the value of prescribed parameter x. This dynamic control is effected either manually or automatically. In a particular embodiment of the invention, dynamically controlled differentiation is realized by associating a random number (or other randomly chosen value) with each object instance (contact), and to use this random number in one or more decisions relating to how the object instance (contact) should be processed. That is, a randomized differentiator is utilized as the dynamically controlled differentiator.

System and method including dynamic differential treatment in workflows and contact flow

A logical data architecture for fetch-intensive database applications includes a first and a second logical database. The second database includes materialized views over the first database. Updates are propagated from the first database to the second database using so-called view maintenance techniques. In preferred embodiments, the first database may be optimized for update transactions and the second database may be optimized for read transactions. At least one of the materialized views included in the second database is based on a pre-defined application read transaction. The update processing overhead associated with view maintenance is substantially performed at the first database.

Data architecture for fetch-intensive database applications

Growing community of inventors

Bridgewater, NJ, United States of America

Bharat Kumar