Leaving a message for a party while on an active real-time communication

This invention relates to real-time communications, such as telephone calls, and to messaging within the context of a real-time communication.

It often happens during a real-time communication between parties, such as a telephone call, that one of the parties has to momentarily step away from the communication. The one party that is stepping away will likely leave the communication active and just set down their communication endpoint without putting the other party or parties on hold. The other party or parties may become impatient after a while, and may wish to leave a message for the one party that stepped away, and then hang up. But, without having been put on hold, the other party or parties are currently not provided with a mechanism by means of which they can leave a message for the one party.

U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,704,565 and 5,930,339 describe systems that allow a party that has been put on hold to leave a message for the hold-initiating party. These solutions do not enable a party who has not been put on hold to leave a message for the other party to the call.

A further disadvantage of these prior art systems is that the hold-initiating party must dial into a message system in order to retrieve the message. It would be desirable if the party could receive the message immediately upon returning to the present call.

Also, in a conference situation, one of the conferees may wish to drop off of the conference, but does not wish to interrupt the conference by announcing his or her intention to drop off. It would be desirable if a conferee could leave a message for receipt by the conferees immediately either upon a break in the conference conversation or upon the conversation being directed to him or her.

This invention is directed to solving these and other problems and disadvantages of the prior arts. According to one embodiment of the invention, one party to a presently-active communication between two (or more) parties—that is, a communication that has not been disconnected, transferred to a messaging system, put on hold, parked, or otherwise disconnected between the parties—can leave a message for the other party, and the other party receives the message as soon as presence on the communication of the other party is detected (illustratively, as soon as the other party returns to the call). The other party preferably receives the message automatically, and does not have to take any action, such as access any messaging system, establish a new connection, or press any keys, to receive the message.

According to another embodiment of this invention, a party to a conference can leave a message for the other conferees, and the conferees receive the message at a suitable time, such as either during a break in the conference conversation or when the conversation is directed to that party. Thus, the party preferably does not need to interrupt the conference to notify the other participants of his or her dropping off.

These and other features and advantages of the invention will become more apparent from considering the following description of an illustrative embodiment of the invention together with the drawing, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a communication system that includes an illustrative embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 2 is a functional flow diagram of actions of a first party to a communication in the system of FIG. 1 ;

FIG. 3 is a functional flow diagram of actions of a second party to the communication in the system of FIG. 1 ; and

FIG. 4 is a functional flow diagram of operations of the system of FIG. 1 cooperative with the actions shown in FIGS. 2 and 3 .

FIG. 1 shows an illustrative real-time communications system, illustratively a voice or a multimedia communication system. In its simplest form, the system includes two or more end-user communication devices, referred to as endpoints 102 , 104 and 105 , interconnected by a communications network 106 . The communications system of FIG. 1 may be any desired type of system—analog or digital, circuit-switched or packet-switched, a hybrid of the above, etc. Depending upon the type of communications system, network 106 may include one or more servers 112 - 114 —such as switches in the case of a circuit-switched system or routers in a packet-switched system, for example.

One or more of network 106 and endpoints 102 and 104 are equipped with messaging functionality 108 , 110 , 118 . In the case of network 106 , the messaging functionality may be implemented either in one or more servers 112 and 114 , or as a separate messaging system 110 . Messaging functionality 108 , 110 , 118 is illustratively voice messaging, although it can be any other desired form of messaging functionality, such as text messaging or multimedia messaging, for example. Messaging functionality 108 , 110 , 118 , may be implemented in any desired form, such as hardware, firmware, software, or any combination thereof. The form and locus of the messaging functionality is substantially unimportant to the scope of the present invention.

One or more of network 106 and endpoints 102 and 104 are further equipped with presence-detection functionality—illustratively voice-activity detection (VAD) 109 , 119 —for detecting presence of a party on the communication. In one embodiment of the invention, the entity that is equipped with VAD 109 , 119 is the same entity that is equipped with messaging functionality 108 , 118 . In another embodiment, the equipped entities are different.

Functionality of the communications system of FIG. 1 according to an embodiment of the invention is shown in FIG. 4 , while FIGS. 2 and 3 show the actions user 1 122 and user 2 124 of endpoints 102 and 104 , respectively, that are involved in an illustrative example of the invention. Assume that user 1 122 and user 2 124 are engaged in an active real-time communication with each other through their endpoints 102 and 104 , at steps 200 and 300 of FIGS. 2 and 3 , respectively. Further assume that user 1 122 temporarily stops communicating via endpoint 102 , at step 202 of FIG. 2 . For example, user 1 122 leaves endpoint 102 to answer the door, or to look something up, etc.

Significantly, user 1 122 maintains the communication in an active state. That is, he or she does not disconnect endpoint 102 from endpoint 104 by placing the communication on hold, parking the communication, transferring the communication to another endpoint or entity, etc., nor does he or she terminate the communication session of the communication. Thus, the communication remains in an active state, and user 2 124 of endpoint 104 is left waiting on the call, at step 302 of FIG. 3

Now suppose that user 2 124 gets tired of waiting for user 1 122 to return to the call, as determined at step 304 , and instead of waiting further, he or she wants to leave a message for user 1 122 , as determined at step 306 . Alternatively, an entity of the system of FIG. 1 detects absence of one party from the call, through a lack of communications traffic (e.g., silence) on the call, for a predetermined period of time, and in response prompts user 2 124 to indicate his or her desire as to how to proceed. In either case, user 2 124 , signals his or her desire via endpoint 104 , at step 308 , such as by actuating a particular actuator on endpoint 104 . This results in user 2 124 being connected to messaging functionality 108 , 110 , or 118 , at step 402 of FIG. 4 . How this result is carried out depends on which messaging functionality is present. If messaging functionality 108 is present on endpoint 104 , the signal is received internally in endpoint 104 , at step 400 of FIG. 4 , and endpoint 104 connects user 2 124 via its user interface to messaging 108 in endpoint 104 , at step 402 . If messaging functionality 118 is present on near-end server 114 , endpoint 104 sends the signaling to server 114 . Server 114 receives the signal, at step 400 , and in response connects endpoint 104 to messaging 118 at server 114 . If messaging functionality 110 is present, endpoint 104 sends the signaling to server 114 . Server 114 receives the signal, at step 400 , and in response connects endpoint 104 to messaging functionality 110 . If messaging functionality 118 is present in far-end server 112 , endpoint 104 sends the user's signal to server 112 through server 114 . Server 112 receives the signal, at step 400 , and in response connects endpoint 104 to messaging 118 at server 112 . If messaging functionality 108 is present on endpoint 102 , endpoint 104 sends the user's signal to endpoint 102 through network 106 . Endpoint 102 receives the signal, at step 400 , and in response connects endpoint 104 to messaging 108 in endpoint 102 .

Whichever messaging functionality 108 , 110 , 118 gets connected to endpoint 104 now prompts user 2 124 to leave a message for user 1 122 , at step 310 of FIG. 3 , and the connected messaging functionality records the message, at step 404 of FIG. 4 . After leaving the message, user 2 124 hangs up or otherwise terminates the communication, at step 312 of FIG. 3 , and consequently user 2 124 gets disconnected from the messaging functionality, at step 406 of FIG. 4 .

The presence-detection functionality—in this example VAD 109 or 119 of whichever entity 102 , 104 , 112 , 114 connected user 2 124 to the messaging functionality—now begins to monitor the communication for return of user 1 122 to the communication, at step 408 . When user 1 122 returns and resumes his or her participation in the communication—by saying “hello” or “sorry . . . ”, for example—at step 204 of FIG. 2 , the monitoring VAD 109 or 119 detects and signals the return of user 1 122 , at step 410 of FIG. 4 . In response to the signaling, the entity 102 , 104 , 112 , 114 that is associated with detecting VAD 109 or 119 connects the messaging that recorded the message to endpoint 102 and causes the messaging to play the message to user 1 122 , at step 412 . User 1 122 receives the message, at step 206 of FIG. 2 . The same entity 102 , 104 , 112 , 114 then disconnects the messaging from endpoint 102 , at step 414 , and user 1 122 hangs up or otherwise terminates the communication, at step 208 of FIG. 2 . The messaging entity 108 or 118 can provide user 1 122 with other standard features like save message, delete message, etc.

In an alternative embodiment, one or more additional endpoints 105 (see FIG. 1 ) may be involved in the communication, which is now a conference. The conference is conventional and conventionally implemented. For example, a server 114 of network 106 implements the conference, where server 114 may illustratively be a private branch exchange (PBX) or a central conference bridge server. In addition to VAD 119 , server 114 is equipped with speech-recognition functionality 117 . A participant 102 - 105 in the conference leaves a message for the other conference participants in the manner described above, and then drops out of the conference. VAD 119 and speech-recognition functionality 117 then monitor the conference for a suitable moment at which to play the message out to the other conference participants. VAD 119 monitors the conference for a pause in the conversation, i.e., a lack of voice activity, while speech-recognition functionality 117 monitors the conference for any conversation directed to the participant who dropped off, e.g., for occurrence of the dropped-off participant's name in the conversation. When the monitored-for activity occurs, server 114 causes messaging functionality 118 or 110 to play out the dropped-off participant's message to the other participants.

The term “call” as used herein is intended to be construed broadly so as to encompass traditional telephony, internet telephony communications, VoIP communications, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) communications, multimedia communications, or other types of network traffic in a network-based communication system.

Of course, various changes and modifications to the illustrative embodiments described above will be apparent to those skilled in the art. For example, any user of a real-time may be permitted to leave a message at any time, even when the user is not kept waiting. This may be desirable due to the fact that one party does not think that the other party is listening to him/her or just does not feel like continuing the conversation and just wants to leave a message for the other party and drop off. Or, a party may wish to leave a message that will be played when there's a pause in the conference call conversation, but the party intends to return to the call. For example, the message might be “My boss is calling, I'll be back in a minute.” In this case, the party will not drop off, and will merely set the phone down or put the call on hold. If the party rejoins the call when the message has not yet been played, the party will desire to have the message canceled, preferably automatically. The automatic cue to cancel the message might be the party's taking the call off hold or rejoining the conversation. Such changes and modifications can be made without departing from the spirit and the scope of the invention and without diminishing its attendant advantages. It is therefore intended that such changes and modifications be covered by the following claims except insofar as limited by the prior art.