Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Robert William Serr

Mark McClelland

Scott Alan Huddleston

Mark Timothy Madsen

Ganesh Kumar Gella

Jason Hendrick Bubolz

Yonnas Getahun Beyene

Venkata Abhinav Sidharth Bhagavatula

Steven Todd Rabuchin

Saiprasad Satya Kapila

Gregory Louis Chappell

Robert Pulciani

Antonio Melis

Manikya Pavan Kiran Pothukuchi

Venkat Sasank Donavalli

Vasanth Narendranath Petlu

Harshawardhan Chiplonkar

Jonathan Uy Hatol

Amit Gupta

Santhosh Kumar Misro

Allyson Straka

Techniques for providing a standardized voice user interface (VUI) that enables voice to voice natural language understanding (NLU) processing are described. The standardized VUI may be added to speechlets to enable a customer to interact with a business via server(s) using NLU processing. For example, a first user may initiate a first voice interaction using NLU processing with the server(s) and the system may initiate a second voice interaction using NLU processing between the server(s) and a second user. This enables a customer to initiate a transaction (e.g., request information, place an order, make a reservation, etc.) with the business using the speechlet. Thus, the business may use the speechlet to offer services without requiring additional infrastructure or complicated programming to implement.

Voice to voice natural language understanding processing

Methods and systems for adding functionality to an account of a language processing system where the functionality is associated with a second account of a first application system is described herein. In a non-limiting embodiment, an individual may log into a first account of a language processing system and log into a second account of a first application system. While logged into both the first account and the second account, a button included within a webpage provided by the first application may be invoked. A request capable of being serviced using the first functionality may be received by the language processing system from a device associated with the first account. The language processing system may send first account data and the second account data to the first application system to facilitate an action associated with the request, thereby enabling the first functionality for the first account.

Third party account linking for voice user interface

In some examples, by communicating with a mobile service, a user of a mobile device may settle his or her bill with a business using the mobile device. The business may be configured with a beacon to determine when the user's mobile device is near the business and a point-of-sale device to manage user orders and communicate with a mobile payment service. In response to a request by the mobile device, the mobile payment service may debit a user account associated with the mobile device for items purchased at the business. In turn, the mobile payment service may pay the business for the items purchased at the business.

Proximity-based mobile device payments

In some examples, by communicating with a mobile payment service, a user of a mobile device may settle his or her bill with a business using the mobile device. The business may be configured with a beacon to determine when the user's mobile device is near the business and a point-of-sale device to manage user orders and communicate with the mobile payment service. In response to a request by the mobile device, the mobile payment service may debit a user account associated with the mobile device for items purchased at the business. In turn, the mobile payment service may pay the business for the items purchased at the business. In some examples, the bill may be divided among a plurality of users corresponding to a plurality of mobile devices. And, portions of the bill may be provided to individual mobile devices of the plurality of mobile devices.

Technologies are described herein for distinguishing between conference participants associated with different groups. A communication is received from a participant during a conference. The participant's group affiliation is determined and a representation attribute corresponding to the group is used to render the communication within the conference. As a result, the communications from participants of like groups are displayed with like representation attributes to visually distinguish the communications according to group affiliations. An administrator may designate the representation attributes so that all of the communications from participants of the same group are similarly distinguished without action from the participants. Participants may filter the communications as desired according to the groups and corresponding representation attributes.

Distinguishing conference participants

A conference management system is described for administering large numbers of conferences in an organization. The conference management system receives a hierarchical set of categories from a system administrator and configuration settings for each category. When a user requests to create a new conference, the conference management system creates the conference and assigns the new conference to a category. The conference takes on the settings of the category to which it belongs, which eliminates individual configuration of each conference. Administrators can also delegate authority to manage conferences to others in the organization.

Managing unified communications conferences via categories

Groups within an organizational directory are set up as real-time groups enabling subscribers of those groups to receive incoming content via feeds or to interact with the group through real-time chat sessions. Subscribers are enabled to switch between interaction modes, employ different real-time communication modalities for chat sessions, and access stored records of incoming content, discussions, and similar data.

Real-time directory groups

Users are enabled to traverse seamlessly between electronic mail and real time communications such as text messaging, group chats, and similar forms. A context of communications such as a history of the email exchange, attached or related documents, links, trail of exchanged text messages, and comparable information is used to automatically determine addressees for the communication form after the traverse and to provide context information.

Traversing between electronic mail and real time communications

In general, this disclosure describes techniques of controlling communications occurring in a unified communications system. As described herein, a directory is established at a server system that hosts the unified communications system. The directory includes a plurality of hierarchically-organized categories. Each category specifies a set of users. One or more conferences may be associated with each of the categories. All communications occurring in the unified communications system occur within the context of one of the conferences. A user can only communicate within a conference if the conference is associated with the category that specifies a set of users that includes the user. By appropriately structuring the categories in the directory and the sets of users specified by the categories, the techniques of this disclosure may serve to prevent a user from using the unified communications system to communicate with certain other individuals.

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Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Robert William Serr