The present disclosure relates to communication technologies, and in particular, to a method and device for implementing dynamic groups.
As communication devices and mechanisms become more and more developed, people can contact each other in wider areas, and are free from restriction of geographic areas. A user may have frequent contact with pals in many cities and regions, and generally store the contact modes of such remote pals in the mobile station. When roaming to a remote area, the user may contact the pals in this visited area. However, the telephone numbers of the pals stored in the mobile station are usually distributed separately, and are hard to find; or the user does not remember which pals in the visited area are recorded in the address book of the mobile station at all.
In the conventional roaming reminder technology, a Home Location Register (HLR) is reconstructed and a roaming prompt server is added to implement the roaming reminder service through a short message. Therefore, when the user roams to an area, the user receives a short message of greeting or advertisement reminder from the local operator, or the user may query the current roaming region through a short message. However, this service provides only basic roaming reminder services for the user, and no further services are available, for example, displaying a list of pals in the roam area to the user.
The Personal Information Management (PIM) service in the conventional art provides the personal information storage and management service, for example, stores contact information of relatives, friends and clients in the address book on the mobile station of the user. The address book backed up and recovered for the user provides secure and convenient services. In the PIM service currently available, the user is allowed only to synchronize the information in the mobile station with a computer or mobile network server by wireless or wired means, and query and manage the address book through multiple terminals and access means. However, the user is unable to dynamically divide the contact numbers in the address book into groups according to the conditions provided by the user or service server. The services derived from such groups are not supported either. For example, a list of contact numbers in a specific group is sent to the user so that the user can conveniently get in touch with the pals in the roam area. The user can automatically combine the pals in the roam area into a Virtual Private Network (VPN) group, to which a VPN short number is assigned.
In the process of researching the present disclosure, the following defects are found in the conventional art: the prior art provides only basic roaming reminder services for the user, providing no further services, and the user is unable to dynamically divide the contact numbers in the address book into groups according to the conditions provided by the user or service server. Thus, the services derived from such groups are not supported either.
The embodiment of the present disclosure provides a method and device for implementing dynamic groups so that the user may dynamically divide the contact numbers in the address book on the mobile station into groups according to the roaming state of the user and manage and store the groups.
A method for implementing dynamic groups in an embodiment of the present disclosure includes the following steps: receiving a roam notification message of a roaming user, where the roam notification message includes location information; finding, from an address book of the user, pal information that matches the location information carried in the roam notification message; and creating a group according to the matching pal information.
A device for implementing dynamic groups in an embodiment of the present disclosure includes: a condition resolving module, adapted to receive the roam notification message of a roaming user, and resolve the location information of the roaming user from the roam notification message; and a group matching module adapted to find pal information that matches the location information of the roaming user from the address book of the user, and create a group according to the pal information.
Compared with the conventional art, the method or device provided in an embodiment of the present disclosure obtains location information of the roaming user, finds the pals whose home area matches the location information of the roaming user from the address book of the user, and creates a group according to the address information. Therefore, better services based on the group are available, for example, when the user roams to a remote city, the user may find the group of the pals in this city quickly and get in touch with them conveniently. Network operators may provide better value-added services and service experience for the user, for example, roam area pal notification service, and same-city VPN service.
A method for implementing dynamic groups in an embodiment of the present disclosure includes: resolving, when a mobile station user roams, the location information of the roam area of the user according to the roam notification message of the user; querying the mobile number segment table to find the range of the mobile numbers of the current roam area of the mobile station user; finding, from the address book of the mobile station user, the pals whose home area matches the location information of the roaming user according to the range of mobile numbers; and creating a group according to the information on the matching pals.
The present disclosure is hereinafter described in more detail by reference to the embodiments of the present disclosure.
As shown in
Step S101: Receiving the roam notification message of the roaming user, where the roam notification message carries location information;
Step S102: Finding pal information that matches the location information carried in the roam notification message from the address book of the user; and
Step S103: Creating a group according to the pal information.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the foregoing dynamic groups may be implemented through a system composed of a PIM server, Mobile Switching Center (MSC), Visitor Location Register (VLR), Home Location Register (HLR), and Short Message Service Centre (SMSC), and may be implemented through a system composed of a terminal device, MSC, VLR, HLR, and SMSC.
The following description supposes that the dynamic groups are implemented through a system composed of a PIM server 210, MSC/VLR 201, HLR 203 and SMSC 204 in an embodiment of the present disclosure.
The process of finding the address information and creating a group according to the address information in an embodiment of the present disclosure includes the following four steps.
Step 1: When detecting that the user is roaming, the HLR 203 generates a roam notification message, and sends the roam notification message to the PIM server 210 using, for example, a short message. The roam notification message carries the location information of the roaming user. The roam notification message carries a Mobile Station International ISDN Number (MSISDN) and a Mobile Station Roaming Number (MSRN). The MSRN is the location information. The format of the MSRN matches the format of the MSISDN, and the MSRN is allocated by the VLR 201 in the roam area of the user.
Step 2: The PIM server 210 analyzes the roam notification message, and resolves the MSISDN and MSRN of the user from the message.
Step 3: According to the location information in the roam notification message of the user, the PIM server 210 finds the pals whose home area matches the location information.
Referring to
The mobile number segment table includes the telecom number segment information of the telecom operator based on the geographic area. The number segment table helps determine the geographic location of a telephone number or the telephone number segment range corresponding to a geographic area.
In the current numbering plan of mobile communication networks, the general format of the MSRN is CC-NDC-H0H1H2H3—ABCD, where: CC: Country Code, for example, the CC of China is 86; NDC: National Destination Code, for example, the NDC of China Unicom is 130-133, and the NDC of China Mobile is 134-139; H0H1H2H3 corresponds to each VLRIN.
Table 1 shows the corresponding relation between the MSRN and the location information.
For example, after a Chengdu user whose MSISDN is 8613808058945 roams to Shenzhen, the visited VLR of the user allocates an MSRN “13810409999” to the user, where 1040 represents the VLRIN. Thus, the analysis in Table 1 reveals that the user is currently in Shenzhen.
Step S302: According to the location information of the roam area, querying the mobile number segment table in the PIM server 210, and obtaining the valid number segment range of the roam area. That is, querying the valid telephone number segment range corresponding to an area according to the preset rules of the operator.
For example, after it is determined that the user currently roams to Shenzhen, the resolving module searches the mobile number segment table and finds that the valid number segment range of the current roam area is 1341039˜1342419, 1371472˜1373564 and 1382652˜1385648 through matching.
Table 2 is a mobile number segment table.
Step S303: From the online address book of the user, retrieving the contact numbers of all pals, and matching them with the valid number segment range of the current roam area. If the contact number of a pal falls within the number segment range, it indicates that the home area of the pal corresponding to the number is the current roam area of the user. For example, by querying the online address book of the user 8613808058945, the group matching module in the PIM server 210 retrieves the contact numbers of all pals in the online address book of the user, and matches them with the valid number segment range of the current roam area. If the contact number of a pal falls within the number segment range, it indicates that the pal corresponding to the number is located in the current roam area of the user.
Step 4. The matching results of the group matching module 212 are constructed into a group, which is called “same-city pal group” of the user. The same-city pal group is implemented in two ways:
(1) A new storing module 213 is created independently of the user online address book in the PIM server 210, and the group is stored. The data structure of the group is shown in Table 3.
(2) A special same-city pal group ID is defined based on the storage mode of the existing user online address book in the PIM server 210, and the current same-city pal group ID (Active Group ID) is added into “Group ID” of the existing user online address book, as shown in Table 4:
In Table 4, “Contact ID” is the ID of a pal in the PIM, for example, the telephone number of the pal. “Group ID” is the ID of the group that includes the pal. “Active Group ID” is the same-city pal group ID of the user. “1” and “2” in the “Group ID” are IDs of other groups that include the pal.
The relevant service is carried out based on the created same-city pal group, for example, the roam area pal notification service, which delivers the group to the user terminal; same-city pal VPN service, which allocates a VPN short number to each pal in the group and constructs a VPN group.
A system including a mobile station 220, MSC/VLR 201, HLR 203, and SMSC 204 is disclosed herein to implement the dynamic group method. The structure of the system is shown in
A device for implementing dynamic groups is disclosed in an embodiment of the present disclosure. The device may be a PIM server 210 or mobile station 220. For the structure of the device, refer to
As shown in
The PIM server 210 in
As shown in
The structure of the mobile station is the same as the PIM server 210, and is not repeated here any further.
When the device implements the function of the same-city pal group of the user at the network side, the device is a PIM server 210. When the device implements the function of the same-city pal group of the user at the user terminal side, the device is a mobile station 220.
The foregoing embodiment is only one of the preferred embodiments of the present disclosure. Many technical solutions are disclosed in the present disclosure. For example, the roam notification message may be sent by the SMSC 204 to the condition resolving module 211 in the PIM server 210, or sent by the network devices such as HLR 203 and VLR 201 to the condition resolving module 211 in the PIM server 210. When the mobile user is unable to implement the PIM service, the roam notification message may be sent to the mobile station 220 through a short message, and the mobile station 220 constructs a same-city pal group.
Through the foregoing embodiments, those skilled in the art understand that the disclosure may be realized through software and general hardware platforms or through hardware only. In most cases, it is preferred to use software and general hardware platforms. Based on such understandings, the technical solution under the present disclosure or contributions to the conventional art can be embodied by software products. The software is stored in a storage medium and incorporates several instructions to instruct a computer device, for example, a PC, server, or network device, to execute the method provided in the embodiments of the present disclosure.
The embodiments described above are only preferred embodiments that are not intended to limit the protection scope of the present disclosure. It is apparent that those skilled in the art can make various modifications and variations to the disclosure without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosure. The disclosure is intended to cover the modifications and variations provided that they fall in the scope of protection defined by the following claims or their equivalents.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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200710073932.9 | Mar 2007 | CN | national |
This application is a continuation of International Patent Application No. PCT/CN2008/070364, filed Feb. 27, 2008, which claims the benefit of priority of Chinese Patent Application No. 200710073932.9, filed with the Chinese Patent Office on Mar. 29, 2007, and entitled “Method and Device for Implementing Dynamic Groups”, all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | PCT/CN2008/070364 | Feb 2008 | US |
Child | 12494968 | US |