Telephone station equipment employing rewriteable display keys

Abstract

Telephone station equipment consisting of a phone device interconnected with a personal computer. The phone device includes a conventional telephone handset and a keypad employing pushbutton display keys each of which has a writable keyface display for visually indicating the function of the key or other information to the user. The personal computer is connected to both the phone device and to one or more telephone communications channels and is programmed to display prompting information on the key displays and respond to keypress events to perform the functions indicated. The user can perform a variety of telephone system management tasks solely by viewing and manipulating the phone device keypad, including manual dialing, redialing, speed-dialing from a directory of commonly called numbers, making flash disconnections, forwaring calls, controlling call waiting and caller I.D. functions, adjusting speakerphone volume and microphone gain, handling conference calls, automatically logging into remote databases, recording the time and nature of each call in an accounting file, performing unattended call answering and voice mail functions, utilizing voice responsive and automated voice output systems, and other telephone management functions.