Nortel Networks Corporation

John Eric Lumsden

Brian Cruickshank

Paul Michael Brennan

A method and system for identifying conflicting resource claims by applications for a system having a plurality of resources. A set of schemas are predefined for the system, wherein each schema defines a pooling of the resources of the system. Each application is then created based upon one of the schemas so as to be associated with a specified pool or subset of device resources. Applications are executed by a browser. Each application may have more than one state, and each state may have an associated schema. Requests for changes of state, such as invoking an instance of the application, are received by the browser. The browser informs a resource manager of the associated schema and the resource manager identifies the pool or subset of resources for requested state change based upon its schema and determines whether or not the resources are currently in use by another active application. Conflicts may be resolved by a conflict resolution component.

Resource conflict management using predefined XML schemas

The present invention provides a telephony-accessed application system for providing a service, such as voicemail, in accordance with a switching interface such as in the ITU-T H.323 or IETF SIP recommendation. Queuing functionality is made possible in a system which employs a switch which does not support queuing. The queuing functionality is made possible by a queue means which is provided within an application means, i.e. the voicemail means itself. Consequently, the switch itself is relieved of the burden of having to keep track of the exact status of each of its ports at all times. The high-level queuing is performed at a logical level rather than at the physical level, and therefore affords a cleaner interface. Furthermore, the implementation of the queuing functions in the terminating application means allows for the use of a wider variety of intermediate switch means in a network.

Application based queuing via an H.323/SIP interface

The present invention provides a system with a redirect functionality that removes the potential of a bottleneck inherent with a central redirect server. In a communications system according to the present invention, the central redirect server is eliminated in favor of a distributed redirect server. This distributed redirect server is distributed to, and hosted on, telephony access nodes (TANs) in the system. This configuration resolves both the problem of a potential bottleneck and provisioning of redundant redirect server capability.

Distributed redirect server

The invention provides a method, apparatus and system for providing an addressee of a stored message with a graphical notification associated with a source of the stored message. In general terms, a communications device of the addressee is presented with the graphical notification in the form of an information signal which relates the stored message to at least one graphical image associated with the source of the stored message.

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Toronto, Canada

John Eric Lumsden