Patent Application
20140169536
The present invention relates, in general, to electronic meeting space, and, more specifically, to integrating telephone audio into archives of electronic meetings.
The first Internet was a communications system funded and built by researchers for military use. This Internet, originally known as ARPANET, was embraced by the research and academic world as a mechanism for scientists to share and collaborate with other scientists. This collaborative network quickly evolved into the information superhighway of commerce and communication. The Internet explosion was due, in part, by the development of the World Wide Web (WWW) and Web browsers, which facilitated a more graphically-oriented, multimedia system that uses the infrastructure of the Internet to provide information in a graphical, visual, and interactive manner that appeals to a wider audience of consumers seeking instant gratification.
As the technology underlying transmission bandwidth has grown in conjunction with the accessibility to such increasing transmission bandwidth, a new paradigm for the old idea of Internet collaboration is emerging that takes advantage of the modern graphical, visual world. This new paradigm is also driven by the advance in real-time or time-sensitive data transmission technology. Videoconferencing, which has generally never been able to completely supplant teleconferencing as a viable means for communications, is slowly fading away in favor of Internet-driven technology, such as collaborative electronic meetings. Services, such as WEBEX COMMUNICATIONS, INC.'S, WEBEX™ electronic meeting or collaboration services offer the ability for users to connect, at least initially, across the Internet to share voice, video, and data in real time for meetings, presentations, training, or the like. While the WEBEX™ services are generally initiated over the Internet, once a collaborative meeting or session is established, the communications are transferred to a proprietary network.
Current electronic meeting space applications, including WEBEX™, allow recording of the actual meeting. Thus, audio, slide presentations, shared desktop sessions, chat, and other such information that takes place during the electronic meeting are recorded and may be viewed after the meeting is over. Many such online meeting software applications convert various file formats, such as MACROMEDIA, INC.'s MACROMEDIA FLASH™, MICROSOFT CORPORATION's POWERPOINT™, or the like into a single common format such as Small Web File (SWF) format, which is the native format for MACROMEDIA FLASH™, or WEBEX COMMUNICATION INC.'s UNIVERSAL COMMUNICATION FORMAT™ (UCF), thereby allowing the presentation and integration of different file format types. These applications typically record the playback of the meeting in this single, common format, much like a video camera would record some kind of visual presentation (i.e., the video camera would record a scene comprised of many different items into one movie).
While the advances in bandwidth capabilities supports the presentation of multimedia information over the Internet connections underlying the electronic meetings, voice communication is still largely conducted via teleconference. For example, in a typical electronic, online meeting, the parties meet in electronic meeting rooms where multimedia presentations may be played, screens and/or applications shared, whiteboard functionality used, and the like. However, voice communication is still typically made over the plain old telephone network (PSTN) or other standard telecommunications network. The voice communication that occurs over the PSTN is not recorded by the online meeting software applications. This is generally because there is no electronic communication between the PSTN and the electronic meeting system.
Incorporating voice communication over the same connection used for the electronic meeting is technically possible. However, including the voice communication over the network supporting the electronic meeting may cause poor quality audio during periods of high network traffic. While human perception may be able to process and perceive video or visual data that drops a few frames during transmission, it is much more difficult to process and perceive poor quality audio data or audio data that drops a few frames during transmission. Once the user experiences the diminished audio quality, he or she will be less likely to use the electronic meeting application again.
No facility currently exists that connects the two systems in such a fashion. In fact, existing electronic meeting applications have little or no integration with the telecommunications systems. In the most state of the art electronic systems, only basic teleconferencing controls are made accessible to the online meeting participant. In such systems, the meeting participants may start the conference, place someone on hold, or other such basic function. However, the audio from the voice communication on the teleconference is not included in the recordings or archiving of the electronic meeting. Selected teleconferencing systems may provide a recording or transcript of the teleconference to online meeting participants, but the recording is largely separate from the recording of the online meeting.
The present invention is directed to a system and method for integrating telephone audio into electronic meeting archives. A service gateway provides a communication link between the telephony server operating the teleconferencing functionality and the conferencing server operating the electronic meeting functionality. This gateway preferably translates the signaling information from the telephony server from the telephony-related format into a format compatible with the electronic meeting application. The telephony signaling may then be presented in the interface of the electronic meeting, such that full operation, control, and monitoring of a related teleconference may be directed from the electronic meeting interface.
The conferencing server monitors the teleconference signaling in addition to the electronic meeting and creates a metadata file that provides a detailed timeline of the electronic meeting. Timestamps are recorded in relation to meeting events, whether those events occur within the electronic meeting or whether they occur on the related teleconference. The teleconference recording may be obtained from the teleconference provider in any number of audio formats. When playing back the electronic meeting, or parts thereof, the conferencing server controls the playback of the teleconference audio using the detailed metadata file to provide synchronization of the meeting with the audio playback of the teleconference and the other electronic data that was presented in the electronic portion of the electronic meeting. Because the metadata file contains all of the details associated with the entire meeting, including the signals and information occurring on the teleconference, the conferencing server may playback the teleconference audio and supplement the playback with the detailed information from the metadata file, as to the identity of the speaker, the topics of discussion, which parties are attending the meeting via telephone only versus online, and other such detailed meeting information. Thus, the telephone audio from the teleconference portion of the electronic meeting is integrated with the electronic archives in an intelligent and meaningful way.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. It should be appreciated that the conception and specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. It should also be realized that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the invention as set forth in the appended claims. The novel features which are believed to be characteristic of the invention, both as to its organization and method of operation, together with further objects and advantages will be better understood from the following description when considered in connection with the accompanying figures. It is to be expressly understood, however, that each of the figures is provided for the purpose of illustration and description only and is not intended as a definition of the limits of the present invention.
For a more complete understanding of the present invention, reference is now made to the following descriptions taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawing, in which:
It should be noted that in various additional and/or alternative embodiments of the present invention, the functionality of gateway 103 may be divided between telephony server 102 and/or conferencing server 100, such that a separate gateway may not exist as a part of the inventive system. For example, conferencing server 100 may include an interface with telephony server 102 that communicates in the telephony-related format triggered by commands issued directly at conferencing server 100. Conversely, telephony server 102 may include an interface that communicates directly with conferencing server 100 in the format compatible with conferencing server 100. Similarly, each of conferencing server 100 and telephony server 102 may include parts of the functionality used to affect communication between the two servers.
When electronic meeting 20 begins, conferencing server 100 begins creation of a meeting metafile that will be saved in archive 206 and telephony server 102 begins recording the telephone audio on the teleconference. The electronic meeting may be recorded onto archive 206 using various archiving means, including the archiving means described in commonly-assigned, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/854,762, entitled, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ARCHIVING COLLABORATIVE ELECTRONIC MEETINGS,” the disclosure of which is incorporated herein. The meeting metafile begins with a timestamp identifying the beginning time of the meeting. As each user joins the meeting, identification information on the meeting participants is located or determined and associated with any visual representations within the meeting interface displayed to each of the meeting participants on their computer displays. This information is also added to the meeting metafile noting the time each participant joins the meeting both online and in the teleconference. Conferencing server 100 knows when each participating client joins the teleconference by receiving signals from telephony server 102. The signals transmitted from telephony server 102 are received by gateway 103 and translated into the conference-compatible format before being transmitted to conferencing server 100.
Telephony server 102 provides various signals as a part of its normal functionality. If a party places his or her phone on hold, mute, or other such different state, telephony server 102 would issue a signal designating such phone state. Through gateway 103, conferencing server 100 would receive the signals identifying the state that any of the telephone connections are in within the teleconference. Telephony server 102 also maintains call data signals such as Automated Number Identification (ANI) signals, which identify the telephone number of the calling party (i.e., caller ID), Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS) signals, which identify the telephone number called by the calling party, and the like. Therefore, conferencing server 100 may also receive the telephone numbers of the conference participants on the teleconference. Using this caller ID information, conferencing server 100 may cross-reference existing databases or information to determine the identities of the conference participants.
Additionally, telephony server 102 is capable of detecting the line from which audio is being received. Therefore, by receiving signals identifying the current phone line speaking along with the caller ID information for that phone line, conferencing server 100 may determine which teleconference participant is the current speaker at any given time. This may be reflected visually by icons and/or animations specifying the currently speaking party on the visual interface of the online meeting on each of computers 201-203 and enhanced telephone 204/T. Each time this information is received by conferencing server 100, a notation is added to the meeting metafile identifying the time of each event along with the nature of the event.
Telephony server 102 may also control various call aspects of the teleconference participants. For example, telephony server 102 may control the volume of the telephone audio originating at any of telephones 201-T-203-T, enhanced telephone 204/T, and telephone 207-T. Callers may be muted completely, placed on hold, disconnected, connected, and the like. Because telephony server 102 is capable of controlling such functionality, conferencing server 100, through its connection to telephony server 102 via gateway 103, may also control the telephone audio for each of the teleconference meeting participants. Commands issued through the online meeting interface may be relayed through conferencing server 100, converted at gateway 103, and issued at telephony server 102 to affect some kind of control functionality. Therefore, the volume, or any other aspect of the teleconference audio, of each of the teleconference participants may be controlled.
Furthermore, because one of the functionalities that telephony server 102 is capable of performing is connecting callers, a meeting host may provide that conferencing server 100 call each of the participants in the electronic meeting, such that the participants would not have to call in to the teleconference. The accessible database of phone numbers and contact information may be accessed by the meeting host and/or conferencing server 100, or the meeting host may manually enter phone numbers to instruct telephony server 102, through gateway 103, to call out to each of telephones 201-T-203-T and 207-T, and enhanced telephone 204/T. Thus, the electronic meeting may be initiated by conferencing server 100, instead of relying on the meeting participants to join into the meeting on their own.
At the end of electronic meeting 20, conferencing server 100 obtains a recording of the telephone audio from telephony server 102 and stores it onto archive 206. Using the meeting metafile, the entirety of electronic meeting 20 may be reviewed or replayed in whole or in part. The online portion of electronic meeting 20, including the meeting metafile, has also been recorded onto archive 206. As a replay of electronic meeting is begun, the telephone audio file is replayed, synchronized by conferencing server 100 using the meeting metafile. Because the telephone audio file and the meeting metafile will be synchronized, the descriptive information about the content of the meeting will be matched up with the timing of the audio replay. Therefore, even though telephony server 102 is generally not able to record the audio of the teleconference including any additional information, such as identifying the various start times, stop times, hold statuses, currently speaking participant, or the like, the replay of electronic meeting 20 by conferencing server 100 may provide the detailed information on the entire meeting by using the metadata recorded in meeting metafile and synchronized with the audio in the telephone audio file.
Telephone audio file 30 is a single recording of the audio that occurred during the teleconference. It is bounded by start time 300 and end time 313. Meeting metafile 31 also includes notations of the various events that occur during the electronic meeting, including the same start and end times, start time 300 and end time 313. During a particular playback, meeting metafile 31 is synchronized with telephone audio file 30. Beginning at start time 300, the conferencing server may begin playback of the audio from telephone audio file 300. At time point 301, Caller1 joined the conference call and began talking. This is also represented in Caller1 timeline. Caller1 joins and begins talking at time point 301. Thus, during playback, the meeting interface reflects that Caller1 is speaking, while the audio being played from telephone audio file 30 will reflect the speech of Caller1 after time point 301.
At time point 302, Caller2 and Caller3 both join the teleconference. Caller1 stops talking at time point 303, while Caller2 begins talking at time point 304. The conferencing server uses meeting metafile 31 to index telephone audio file 30 for playback. For example, if a user desires to replay only the first half of the meeting, meeting metafile 31 will be used to play back the relevant parts of telephone audio file 30. During this playback, the meeting environment interface uses the metadata from meeting metafile 31 to provide relevant visual information to the user. The interface may visually indicate which meeting participant is speaking, when a participant joined the meeting, and the like, such as by providing a specific icon that represents a current speaker in a meeting participant window or pod. Therefore, the meeting interface uses the metadata of time points 300-309 to synchronize the playback of the audio from telephone audio file 30 with the electronic information recorded by the conferencing server to replay the first half of the meeting.
A user may also desire to search the general archive for discussions of a particular topic. For example, the user may desire to review all discussions of product sales. During the meeting, Caller2 discussed product sales between time points 304 and 308, and Caller3 discussed product sales between time points 311 and 312. In compiling the replay of the meeting excerpts, the archiving functionality would assemble the electronic archives, such as slides, animations, graphs, or the like that were presented visually on the electronic portion of the meeting that dealt with product sales and replay the teleconference audio from telephone audio 30 using the synchronizing data from meeting metafile 31. The archiving function would replay the audio between time points 304 and 308 and between 311 and 312 synchronized to the electronic events being displayed at the corresponding time points. Thus, meeting metafile 31 operates as a framework or index that is used by the system to control replay of telephone audio 30 in a manner that is synchronized to the replay of the electronic information presented in the electronic portion of the meeting.
It should be noted that in additional and/or alternative embodiments of the present invention, conferencing server 100 (
It should be further noted that in additional and/or alternative embodiments of the present invention, conferencing server 100 (
It should further be noted that additional and/or alternative embodiments of the present invention may include capability to merge and integrate non-telephone audio into the teleconference. Referring back to
In order to accommodate this situation, the system of the described embodiment uses the functionality of gateway 103 to deliver computer-only audio into the teleconference through telephony server 102, and deliver teleconference audio to computer-only participants. When computer-only audio is present from a meeting participant, conferencing server 100 converts the audio format to a format compatible with telephone server 102. Conferencing server then streams the converted audio through gateway 103 to telephony server 102 to be added into the teleconference audio. Therefore, the meeting participants using telephones 201-T-203-T, 204/T, and 207-T may each hear the voice audio provided by the user at computer 201 speaking over microphone 208. Furthermore, telephony server 102 records this audio as a part of the teleconference recording. Thus, telephone audio file 30 (
Similarly, when a computer-only participant is detected, the telephone audio from the teleconference may be streamed by telephony server 102 through gateway 103 to conferencing server 100 and then on to the audio capabilities of computer 201. The user at computer 201 would then be able to hear the voice audio of the teleconference even though he or she does not have an open telephone connection to the conference. The described embodiment may accomplish the streaming by converting into a computer/meeting interface-compatible audio format at telephony server 102, gateway 103, or even conferencing server 100. The described embodiment of the present invention is not intended to be limited to performing such conversion at any particular point in the electronic meeting infrastructure.
The program or code segments making up the various embodiments of the present invention may be stored in a computer readable medium or transmitted by a computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave, or a signal modulated by a carrier, over a transmission medium. The “computer readable medium” may include any medium that can store or transfer information. Examples of the computer readable medium include an electronic circuit, a semiconductor memory device, a ROM, a flash memory, an erasable ROM (EROM), a floppy diskette, a compact disk CD-ROM, an optical disk, a hard disk, a fiber optic medium, a radio frequency (RF) link, and the like. The computer data signal may include any signal that can propagate over a transmission medium such as electronic network channels, optical fibers, air, electromagnetic, RF links, and the like. The code segments may be downloaded via computer networks such as the Internet, Intranet, and the like.
Bus 502 is also coupled to input/output (I/O) controller card 505, communications adapter card 511, user interface card 508, and display card 509. The I/O adapter card 505 connects storage devices 506, such as one or more of a hard drive, a CD drive, a floppy disk drive, a tape drive, to computer system 500. The I/O adapter 505 is also connected to a printer (not shown), which would allow the system to print paper copies of information such as documents, photographs, articles, and the like. Note that the printer may be a printer (e.g., dot matrix, laser, and the like), a fax machine, scanner, or a copier machine. Communications card 511 is adapted to couple the computer system 500 to a network 512, which may be one or more of a telephone network, a local (LAN) and/or a wide-area (WAN) network, an Ethernet network, and/or the Internet network. User interface card 508 couples user input devices, such as keyboard 513, pointing device 507, and the like, to the computer system 500. The display card 509 is driven by CPU 501 to control the display on display device 510.
Although the present invention and its advantages have been described in detail, it should be understood that various changes, substitutions and alterations can be made herein without departing from the invention as defined by the appended claims. Moreover, the scope of the present application is not intended to be limited to the particular embodiments of the process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, means, methods and steps described in the specification. As one will readily appreciate from the disclosure, processes, machines, manufacture, compositions of matter, means, methods, or steps, presently existing or later to be developed that perform substantially the same function or achieve substantially the same result as the corresponding embodiments described herein may be utilized. Accordingly, the appended claims are intended to include within their scope such processes, machines, manufacture, compositions of matter, means, methods, or steps.
The present application is related to co-pending and commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/854,762, Attorney Docket No. 47583/P048US/10316466 entitled, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ARCHIVING COLLABORATIVE ELECTRONIC MEETINGS,” the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
