Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Parag Samdadiya

Amritansh Raghav

Rajesh Ramanathan

Danny Levin

Eran Shtiegman

Sankaran Narayanan

Nikhil P Bobde

Sameer Dilip Bedekar

Marc Boyer

Ankur Chavda

A method and system for capturing missed communications is provided. An enhanced real-time communication system receives a communication from an initiating participant for a receiving participant that is not available. The enhanced real-time communication system detects that the receiving participant missed the received communication from the initiating participant. Upon detecting that the receiving participant missed the communication, the enhanced real-time communication system stores the missed communication for later retrieval by the receiving participant.

Missed instant message notification

Providing non-voice capabilities relating to a phone call at a computing device includes receiving a request to begin a telephone call from a first telephone to a second telephone, wherein the requesting is performed using messaging between computing devices connected via a computer network, and wherein the messaging is part of a signaling phase dialog. The signaling phase dialog may be used in providing information associated with the identity of parties of the telephone call. Commencing a call phase dialog between the computing devices may be performed after the telephone call is established over the public switched telephone network. The call phase dialog may allow messages relating to the telephone call to be passed between the computing devices, at least while the telephone call is in progress. The dialogs and messaging may be performed using session initiation protocol (SIP) or another computer communication protocol.

Associating a telephone call with a dialog based on a computer protocol such as SIP

Techniques for selecting a call completion response from a group of call completion responses based on weights associated with the call completion responses, are provided. A server processes a call invitation for a callee by forwarding the call invitation to each of the callee's endpoints. Each of the callee's endpoints associates a weight to its call completion response it generates to accept or reject the call invitation. The server waits to receive the call completion responses from each of the callee's endpoints or for a predetermined period of time (i.e., a timeout), and uses the weights associated with the received call completion responses to decide which of the received call completion responses to use to complete the call invitation.

Endpoint selection for a call completion response

A method and system for accepting invitations sent to multiple endpoints for an instant messaging participant is provided. The acceptance system allows multiple endpoints of a participant to be registered at the same time with an instant messaging service. The endpoint of the inviting participant sends an invitation to the instant messaging service indicating that the receiving participant is to be invited to establish a conversation with the inviting participant. When the instant messaging service receives the invitation, it detects that the receiving participant has multiple endpoints registered and forwards the invitation to each registered endpoint. When an endpoint receives the invitation request, it displays an information window asking whether the receiving participant wants to accept the invitation. Upon acceptance, the endpoint sends an acceptance to the endpoint of the inviting participant to establish the conversation between that endpoint and the endpoint of the inviting participant.

Accepting an invitation sent to multiple computer systems

Techniques for associating one or more real-time sessions, which are each signaled separately, into one logical conversation without a centralized control, are provided. Some techniques share a conversation identifier that uniquely identifies a logical conversation across the real-time sessions that belong to the logical conversation. The conversation identifier is generated before the first real-time session belonging to the logical conversation is signaled, and distributed to the other participants in the logical conversation via the signaling channel. A called participant can use the conversation identifier for associating the previous real-time sessions belonging to the logical conversation, and for making new invitations for other real-time sessions that are associated with the same logical conversation.

Associating real-time conversations with a logical conversation

A method and system for maintaining real-time conversations over unreliable connections is provided. The reliable messaging system initiates a conversation from a sending participant to a receiving participant by sending an invitation to join the conversation to the receiving participant. Once a connection is established, the reliable messaging system associates the conversation with the connection. If the connection is lost, then the reliable messaging system attempts to restore the connection by sending an invitation to the participant that was disconnected. If the reliable messaging system is able to restore the connection, then the new connection is associated with the previous conversation, and the conversation can continue.

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Parag Samdadiya