System for accessing multimedia mailboxes and messages over the internet and via telephone

Abstract

A unified messaging system that provides a multimedia mailbox. The system allows a subscriber to access stored multimedia messages, such as voicemail messages, facsimile messages, combined voice and facsimile messages and video messages, not only through a public switched telephone network using a telephone but also over a data network, such as the Internet or an intranet, using a personal computer. The system provides voicemail access over the telephone network, indicating message number, etc. with the ability to play messages to the telephone user as desired. For text type messages, such as facsimile and e-mail, the system converts the text into speech and plays the speech to the telephone user. The system allows a personal computer user to obtain the data network access using an Internet browser. The browser is used to access a home page of the system and get information about the messages stored, and is used to download (get) and play the messages at the personal computer via data streaming in the case of a voice or video messages or view the messages in the case of text type messages, such as facsimile and e-mail. The user can also perform the other typical messaging functions over the data network connection that are provided for telephone access, such as viewing a message list, saving and deleting messages, group list administration and other administration tasks.