Avaya Technology LLC

Avaya Inc.

Eileen Patricia Rose

Albert D Baker

Vincent H Choy

Albert J Baker

James C Liu

Venkatesh G Iyengar

Frederick Peter Block

Veda Gundanna

Scott Allan Schell

James Cheng-Ping Liu

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

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

An automated administration system for providing state-based control of soft-labeled keys (SLKs) in a wireless terminal or other type of communication system terminal. In an illustrative embodiment, the automated administration system uses a set of operations to generate information representative of a state machine for controlling labels for the SLKs. The operations process input received from a given user, e.g., a form specifying desired features, layout and language, and generate a state transition table or other suitable representation of a corresponding state machine. Other information generated by the automated administration system may include a control table and a label table. The control table associates a different set of SLK label identifiers with each state in a set of states of the terminal. Each of the label identifiers specifies a label to be associated with a given one of the SLKs in at least one of the states. The label identifiers are used as pointers into the label table which specifies, for each of the label identifiers, a corresponding label for one of the SLKs. The set of operations may be repeated for different users or groups of users of the system, such that a different state machine is generated for each of the users or groups, thereby allowing different users or groups to have different types and arrangements of feature access via their terminal SLKs. The set of operations may be implemented at least in part in software associated with a switch of the system.

Automated administration system for state-based control of a terminal user interface

The invention provides techniques for selecting, on a dynamic basis, an interworking function (IWF) that can modify a communication protocol to a particular format required by bridged terminal equipment in a communication system. The IWF can be selected to ensure compatibility between transmission bandwidth, coding and other format parameters of a call and the corresponding parameters of its destination terminal in the system. An IWF in accordance with the invention may be utilized to allow a user to bind to different terminals having different capabilities over the duration of a given call. An IWF in accordance with the invention may also be used to insert additional data, retrieved from a database of the switch, into a reverse portion of the call directed from the destination terminal to the source terminal. The invention can thus be used to ensure that the established bandwidth between the destination terminal and the source terminal is substantially bidirectionally symmetric.

Dynamic selection of interworking functions in a communication system

The invention provides dynamic binding and bridging between a mobile terminal and other more complex terminals in a communication system. In an illustrative embodiment, a temporary association is established, in a memory of a system switch, between the mobile and at least one other system terminal. While the mobile is &ldquo;registered&rdquo; in this manner to the other terminal, the mobile user can request permission to utilize the functions of the other terminal in order to, for example, receive incoming calls or place outgoing calls. The temporary association may be established based on a determination of the proximity of the mobile to the other terminal, such that the mobile registers to different complex system terminals as it moves between different cells of the system. The invention also provides techniques which allow users to access a user-defined profile for one terminal at another terminal of the system.

Dynamic binding and bridging in a communication system

The invention in an illustrative embodiment provides binding and bridging between a mobile terminal and other more complex terminals in a communication system. The binding is based on a determination of the proximity of the mobile to the other terminal, such that the mobile registers to different complex system terminals as it moves between different cells of the system. In accordance with the invention, a proximity-based temporary association is established, in a memory of a system switch, between the mobile and at least one other system terminal. While the mobile is &ldquo;registered&rdquo; in this manner to the other terminal, the mobile user can request permission to utilize the functions of the other terminal in order to, for example, receive incoming calls or place outgoing calls. Other embodiments of the invention provide proximity-based registration which utilizes a beacon device carried by the user, such that the user automatically registers to different system terminals as he or she moves about within the system.

Growing community of inventors

Manasquan, NJ, United States of America

Eileen Patricia Rose