Lucent Technologies Inc.

James David Herbsleb

Graham John Wills

Lalita Jategaonkar Jagadeesan

Randy L Hackbarth

David Gray Boyer

Rebecca Elizabeth Grinter

Peter Andrew Mataga

Patrice Ismael Godefroid

James Owen Coplien

Du Li

A ConnectIcon View is employed to establish collaborative communications between a plurality of participants in a group. Specifically, it is a dynamic visual representation of the participants of a group being invited to communicate together with their presence information, lists of documents and URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) to be examined, and a set of mechanisms (email, chat, voice, and the like) to initiate communication, each of which can be billed to the originator or otherwise as desired. The available presence information allows a user to employ the best mode of communicating for the instant purpose, namely, either asynchronous communication or synchronous communication.

Apparatus and method for use in collaboration services

A so-called 'OpenChannel&#x2122;' conference is established by separating particular participants of the conference from those participants that are actually currently active in the conference. This establishes a type of virtual conference, i.e., meeting, that can be monitored by participants, i.e., users, without requiring them to be actively a part of the conference call. These particular participants are in a so-called monitor mode. These participants can readily change their state from the monitor mode to a listen mode or active mode, as desired. One advantage of this invention is that a long-term conference of months or even years duration can be set up, only incurring a cost to participants when they are active participants in the conference call.

Apparatus and method for use in a data/conference call system for automatically collecting participant information and providing all participants with that information for use in collaboration services

Presence awareness initiatives are implemented in a collaborative system that enables a user to set presence awareness policies, and that provides a reasonably high assurance that the system will correctly implement those policies. Specifically, the collaborative presence awareness system is such as to enable users to specify complex presence awareness policies. The presence awareness system is also such as to have been verified by employing systematic state-space exploration tools to establish a high level of assurance that the presence awareness system has the capability to implement correctly, substantially all possible presence awareness policies. Further, in accordance with another aspect of the invention, the presence awareness policy specifications are modular relative to the rest of the presence awareness system, and can be modified without having to modify computational modules or user interface program code of the presence awareness system. In accordance with another aspect of the invention, a user has the capability to update his or her presence information. In accordance with still another aspect of the invention, the system automatically collects presence information about the user and automatically updates his or her presence information. In accordance with yet another aspect of the invention, the presence awareness system may use specification-based testing at run-time to monitor whether some users' presence awareness policies have inadvertently been violated, further strengthening the reliability of the system.

Presence awareness in collaborative systems

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Naperville, IL, United States of America

James David Herbsleb