Lucent Technologies Inc.

At&t Ipm Corp.

Peter Andrew Mataga

Thomas J Ball

Kenneth G Rehor

Lalita Jategaonkar Jagadeesan

Michael Abraham Benedikt

Curtis Duane Tuckey

Peter John Danielsen

Carlos Miguel Puchol

Stephen Gregory Eick

Rebecca Anne Walpole

Konstantin Laufer

Graham John Wills

David Gray Boyer

Rebecca Elizabeth Grinter

Randy L Hackbarth

James David Herbsleb

James Owen Coplien

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

Interactive services with multiple interfaces are realized by employing a modular approach to their implementation. Such an approach facilitates supporting natural language understanding interaction with users through use of interfaces that at least allow the user to provide information beyond what is currently being requested by the service, and/or different ordering of inputs, and/or incomplete information, and/or correction of information, and/or the return of control to prior points in the service. This is realized, in an embodiment of the invention, by employing an interactive service logic that uses &ldquo;reactive constraint graphs&rdquo;, i.e., a form of event-driven graph in which nodes contain constraints on events, in conjunction with a service monitor. The service monitor manages the communication between the service logic and the multiple user interfaces. As such it provides a communication mechanism in the form of a so-called &ldquo;look ahead&rdquo; in which the user can input information beyond what is currently required by the interactive service. Specifically, in each round of user interaction, reactive constraint graphs report to the service monitor the set of events that are currently enabled. These enabled events correspond to the information the interactive service is currently requesting (or ready to accept) from a user. The user interfaces collect information (perhaps beyond this set) from the user and send it to the service monitor. The service monitor then matches the received information against the information requested by the service logic, and sends the information one event at a time to the service logic, in a priority order specified by the service provider. After each event is sent to the service logic from the service monitor, the service logic reports its new set of enabled events back to the service monitor. In turn, the service monitor sends another event that matches the enabled events to the service logic. The service monitor then notifies the user interfaces to send a new collection, i.e., set, of information from the individual users only when no current information matches the enabled events. This approach advantageously allows a user to input information beyond what is currently needed by the interactive service.

Method and apparatus for providing interactive services with multiple interfaces

Interactive voice response (IVR) services are provided to an end user at a telephone terminal ( ) connected to the PSTN ( ) through a telephone/IP server ( ) that serves as an interface between the PSTN and an IP network ( ) such as the Internet. A first IVR service is provided by a web server ( ) running a service logic ( ) for that service, which produces pages formatted in a phone markup language (PML) in response to an HTTP request sent over the IP network by the telephone/IP server to the web server at the URL address associated with the service. Hyperlinks to a second IVR service offered on a web server ( ) at a different URL address are embedded and associated with a specific question or statement in a PML-formatted page produced by the first service. When the end user affirmatively responds to that statement or question through a verbal or touch-tone input, the telephone/IP server translates that response as a &ldquo;click&rdquo; on the hyperlink and establishes a virtual connection to the hyperlinked URL address of the web server providing the second service. Further, information associated with the end user's interaction with the first service, such as his identity, PIN, and/or zip code, is transferred to the second service by means of a cookie, URL encoding or other information transference mechanism, to provide an audio experience that seamlessly transfers the end user from the first service to the second.

Method of providing transfer capability on web-based interactive voice response services

Interactive services are provided by employing a modular approach to implementing interactive services with multiple interfaces. Such an approach facilitates supporting natural language understanding interaction with users through use of interfaces that allow at least different ordering of inputs, and/or incomplete information, and/or correction of information, and/or the return of control to prior points in the service. This is realized, in an embodiment of the invention, by employing a single interactive service logic that uses &ldquo;reactive constraint graphs&rdquo;, i.e., a form of event-driven graph, in which nodes contain a set of constraints on events. Specifically, control progresses from a node to a derivative node, i.e., &ldquo;child&rdquo;, only when all the constraints in the set on the node have been satisfied. A single set of constraints implicitly supports a significant number of the possible different orderings of inputs. Incomplete information is supported because the constraints in the set are evaluated as soon as possible. Correction of information is supported because information in the constraint set is updated upon receipt of new information. Indeed, use of the reactive constraint graphs allows nodes to be labeled, and allows control to revert to a prior node, i.e., ancestor, hence allowing the user to go back to prior points in the service. New inputs can be added to the constraint sets with a complexity polynomial of the order of the input set.

A sender ( ) creates a voicemail message that includes a plurality of messaging elements that include embedded instructions that define a structure of the message. Other messaging elements may include textual fragments, audio fragments that refer to audio data files that are associated with the message, and/or references to textual fragments and/or audio fragments that are stored at specified locations. The instructions may define a hierarchical menu structure which, when the message is presented to the recipient ( ) by a messaging system ( ), offers the recipient different navigational choices from which the recipient may select and thus effect the information content of what is presented. The structured message is sent by the sender to the recipient at an address on a messaging system that stores the message and is capable of interpreting and assembling the messaging elements in accordance with the embedded instruction and playing-out the message to the recipient when the recipient accesses the system and retrieves the message from storage. The structured message may also include links to a specific destination, to which the messaging system establishes a connection if the link is selected by the recipient during play-out of the message. Further, the messaging system can gather information from the recipient during play-out and forward that information to a specified destination, which may respond with another structured message. In the described embodiment, a phone markup language is used to define the structure and the inherent embedded instructions associated with the structure of the message.

Structured voicemail messages

Method and apparatus for creating and sending structured voicemail messages

The method for assembling and presenting a structured electronic message begins when the sender creates a voicemail message that includes a plurality of messaging elements that include embedded instructions that define a structure of the message. Other messaging elements may include textual fragments, audio fragments that refer to audio data files that are associated with the message, and/or references to textual fragments and/or audio fragments that are stored at specified locations. The instructions may define a hierarchical menu structure which, when the message is presented to the recipient by a messaging system, offers the recipient different navigational choices from which the recipient may select and thus effect the information content of what is presented. The structured message is sent by the sender to the recipient at an address on a messaging system that stores the message and is capable of interpreting and assembling the messaging elements in accordance with the embedded instruction and playing-out the message to the recipient when the recipient accesses the system and retrieves the message from storage. The structured message may also include links to a specific destination, to which the messaging system establishes a connection if the link is selected by the recipient during play-out of the message. Further, the messaging system can gather information from the recipient during play-out and forward that information to a specified destination, which may respond with another structured message. In the described embodiment, a phone markup language is used to define the structure and the inherent embedded instructions associated with the structure of the message.

Method and apparatus for assembling and presenting structured voicemail messages

An apparatus and method for presenting a viewer with an overall representation of the present number of entertainment programs available for selection given one week of program schedule data for 300 or more channels and one or more filtering criteria to limit the number of items represented in the overall representation. Sequentially applied filters will filter the group of program schedule data items that has at least 100,000 half hour time slots offered by 300 channels each week into a smaller subgroup where individual consideration of each item of the subgroup can be made in a reasonable time. A set top box drives the display of overall representations or results of filtering criteria on a commercial TV set. Once a reasonable sized subgroup is obtained, other displays provide specific information of the program offerings of the subgroup. Selection of the filtering criteria and selection from within a subgroup is interactively made by a viewer through the use of a controller that looks and operates very much like a TV remote control. This makes the interaction familiar, easy and predictable.

Growing community of inventors

Naperville, IL, United States of America

Peter Andrew Mataga