Patent Application
20080080677
A method and system for capturing missed communications and for providing an indication to initiating participants that a communication was missed is provided. An enhanced real-time communication system receives a communication from an initiating participant for a receiving participant that misses the communication. A receiving participant may miss a communication for a variety of reasons. For example, the receiving participant's computing device may be locked or displaying a screen saver. If the receiving participant is using multiple computing devices, such as a desktop and a laptop, the receiving participant may have recently switched from one computing device to the other, such that the computing device that the receiving participant is no longer using still accepts received communications. The receiving participant may also miss a communication by explicitly dismissing a notification to join a conversation. Alternatively, the receiving participant may simply be ignoring communications altogether. The enhanced real-time communication system detects that the receiving participant missed the received communication from the initiating participant. For example, the system may observe that the receiving participant dismissed a conversation notification window, or that the receiving participant did not respond to a received communication for a certain period, and determine that the receiving participant missed the communication. Upon detecting that the receiving participant missed the communication, the enhanced real-time communication system stores the missed communication for later retrieval by the receiving participant. For example, the system may send the communication to the receiving participant as an electronic mail message that the receiving participant can retrieve and read later. The system may also provide an indication to the initiating participant that the communication was missed by the receiving participant, such as by displaying a notification icon to the initiating participant. In this way, the enhanced real-time communication system provides a way for a receiving participant to retrieve missed communications and for an initiating participant to be aware when the receiving participant misses a communication.
In some embodiments, the enhanced real-time communication system may store missed communications in an email server. For example, the real-time communication system may create a “Conversation History” folder in the receiving participant's electronic mailbox, and store missed communications as messages in the folder. The receiving participant can then access the missed communications by navigating to the folder using an email client. If the email server provides a web interface, then the receiving participant may be able to access missed messages from any computing device with a web browser.
In some embodiments, the enhanced real-time communication system stores missed communications in a format similar to email. For example, a missed communication may have a sender field, recipient, time sent, subject, and other fields commonly associated with email. Missed communications may contain many types of content such as video, audio, text, images, and other media. The missed communication stored by the enhanced real-time communication system may contain all of the content contained in the original communication. For example, if the initiating participant sends a message using a webcam that contains video and audio data in addition to a text message, the missed communication may be stored with the text in the body of the message and the video and audio data as attachments to the message. The receiving participant may also be able to resume the conversation by replying to the missed communication, similar to replying to an email. The receiving participant may also reply by initiating a phone call, or the stored missed communication may contain a link that opens a new instant messaging conversation with the original initiating participant, thereby allowing the participants to pick up the conversation where it left off.
In some embodiments, the enhanced real-time communication system assigns a unique conversation identifier to each message that is part of the same conversation. For example, an initiating participant may send an instant message to a receiving participant that the receiving participant misses, and the enhanced real-time communication system stores a missed message email and assigns a conversation identifier (e.g., 22 bytes) to the email. If the receiving participant creates a new email message in reply to the missed message email, the system assigns the conversation identifier to the new message so that the message can be identified as part of the same conversation. The system may also append an action identifier (e.g., 5 bytes) to the conversation identifier as each subsequent action is taken such that a history of actions in a conversation can be tracked.
In some embodiments, the enhanced real-time communication system provides an indication when a communication is missed. The system may provide a graphical indicator in the client software of the receiving participant that alerts the receiving participant to the presence of new missed messages that the receiving participant should read. The system may also provide an indication to the initiating participant to indicate that a message that was sent was missed by the receiving participant. For example, if the initiating participant sends a message to a receiving participant, and the system detects that the receiving participant's screen saver is active, the system may alert the initiating participant that the receiving participant missed the message. In this way, the initiating participant will not rely on the receiving participant's having seen the message, and the initiating participant can try another method of communication such as calling the receiving participant to attempt to successfully deliver the message.
In some embodiments, the enhanced real-time communication system waits a certain amount of time after a missed message has been received to determine if other missed communications are part of the same conversation. For example, an initiating participant may send several instant messages to a receiving participant one after the other, without receiving replies to any of the instant messages. If the system determines that the receiving participant missed the first message, then the system may wait to see if other messages arrive that may also be missed. It may be more convenient for the receiving participant to receive one missed instant message email containing all of the missed communications rather than receiving multiple missed instant message emails each containing only one of the missed communications. The amount of time that the system waits may be a set predetermined amount, or may be determined dynamically such as by observing the average amount of time between messages.
In some embodiments, a presence or other server detects that a communication has been missed. For example, a presence server may detect that an initiating participant has sent a communication to a receiving participant that has not been replied to for a certain period and determine that the communication has been missed by the receiving participant. As another example, the server may detect that one participant has closed the conversation before the other participant has replied or that one participant has sent a communication while the other participant's presence state indicates that the participant will miss the communication. The server may also create a missed communication message and send it to the receiving participant by email or other mode of communication upon detecting the missed communication.
The following paragraphs describe various embodiments of the invention as described above with reference to the figures.
The computing device on which the system is implemented may include a central processing unit, memory, input devices (e.g., keyboard and pointing devices), output devices (e.g., display devices), and storage devices (e.g., disk drives). The memory and storage devices are computer-readable media that may contain instructions that implement the system. In addition, the data structures and message structures may be stored or transmitted via a data transmission medium, such as a signal on a communication link. Various communication links may be used, such as the Internet, a local area network, a wide area network, a point-to-point dial-up connection, a cell phone network, and so on.
Embodiments of the system may be implemented in various operating environments that include personal computers, server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based systems, programmable consumer electronics, digital cameras, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and so on. The computer systems may be cell phones, personal digital assistants, smart phones, personal computers, programmable consumer electronics, digital cameras, and so on.
The system may be described in the general context of computer-executable instructions, such as program modules, executed by one or more computers or other devices. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, and so on that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Typically, the functionality of the program modules may be combined or distributed as desired in various embodiments.
From the foregoing, it will be appreciated that specific embodiments of the enhanced real-time communication system have been described herein for purposes of illustration, but that various modifications may be made without deviating from the spirit and scope of the invention. For example, although instant messaging has been described, other forms of real-time communication such as a phone call, VoIP call, webcam chat, or other forms of communication may also be captured by the system as missed communications. Accordingly, the invention is not limited except as by the appended claims.
