Patent Application
20050094793
The present invention relates generally to a system and method for producing a telephone conference record by connecting using a private branch exchange (PBX).
A PBX is a private telephone network used within an enterprise. Users of the PBX share certain number of outside lines for making telephone calls external to the PBX. Most medium-sized and larger companies use a PBX because it is much less expensive than connecting an external telephone line to every telephone in the organization. Additionally, it is easier to call someone within a PBX because the number that would be needed to be dialed is a typically three or four digit number.
Telephone recording systems have existed for many years. Typically, these recording systems have relied upon individual connections to each telephone that may request recording. For example, a system having one hundred telephones would require one hundred ports and an expensive recording system to achieve recording capability for each telephone line. One example of such a recording system is the Freedom® digital recording system, marketed by Dictaphone Corporation, which utilizes DSC-4 cards (each card containing four ports) to connect telephones with the Freedom® recorder. The obvious disadvantage to this type of recording system is the large number of DSC-4 cards, and possibly a large number of system boards, needed to support a large number of telephone lines.
What is needed is a telephone recording system that utilizes the network functionality of a PBX system to reduce the cost of providing recording capability to a large number of telephone lines.
The present invention includes a system and method for producing a telephone conference record through a PBX system. The system includes the steps of detecting when the user has called a recorder port, opening a call record and recording a telephone conversation with another party when the user is connected to a recorder port, detecting when the user's telephone line is disconnected, and stop recording and close the call record when the user's telephone line is disconnected. The recorder port is one of a plurality of recorder ports associated with the PBX, and a user's call to a recorder port may be connected with any of the plurality of recorder ports not recording at that time. Alternatively, the user may be associated with a hunt group that is configured to only a distinct subset of the plurality of recorder ports. The user may establish the telephone connection with the other party either prior to calling the recorder port or after calling the recorder port using the conference capability of the PBX.
In some embodiments, the present invention includes capturing the calling line identification associated with the user if the user has called a recorder port. In this embodiment, the user may call another party prior to calling the recorder port or the user may call another party after calling the recorder port.
While the specification concludes with claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the present invention, it is believed the same will be better understood from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, which illustrate, in a non-limiting fashion, the best mode presently contemplated for carrying out the present invention, and in which like reference numerals designate like parts throughout the Figures, wherein:
The present disclosure will now be described more fully with reference the to the Figures in which an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown. The subject matter of this disclosure may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as being limited to the embodiments set forth herein.
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The flow diagrams of
The recorder 112 is physically similar to a typical recorder found in the prior art, except that instead of using a single DSC-4 card to individually link four telephone lines with four recording ports, a single DSC-OBS card 114 is used to connect four recorder ports to the PBX 100. As in traditional recording systems, multiple DSC-OBS cards installed within the recorder 112 provides more recorder ports. Unlike traditional recorders, however, the system described by the present disclosure is statistically-based. In this type of system, there are fewer RECORDER ports than there are users 102. If there is not a recorder port available when a user wishes to record a telephone call, then the call cannot be recorded and PBX returns a busy signal. Since the present disclosure describes a shared recording resource, a key to its practical success is the statistical grade of service desired. For example, if the system administrator determines that only 10% of the users 112 would require simultaneous recording, then one number of recorder ports that a system administrator may choose for such a system would be 10% of the number of users 112. This is a key advantage over prior art systems, which requires each potential user to be hard-wired into a recording port on a DSC-4 card, thereby adding the complexity and cost of the telephone recording system.
Another feature of the present disclosure that provides better manageability of the shared recording resources discussed above are hunt groups 116, 118, and 120. Hunt groups are useful for isolating specific user groups that may have well-defined or specific recording requirements, routing those recording requests into dedicated recorder ports for that particular hunt group. For example, user group 104 may have their own hunt group 116, user group 106 may have their own hunt group 118, and so on. Alternatively, all users 102 may be a part of a single hunt group if no segregation is warranted. Each hunt group could be configured to a single recorder port or a specified number of recorder ports as required by the number of expected simultaneous users in that hunt group.
The primary difference between the DSC-OBS card 114 of the present disclosure and the prior art DSC-4 card lies in its functionality. Unlike a DSC-4 card, each DSC-OBS card functions like a telephone in that when it receives a call from the PBX 100, it answers through a recorder port and opens up a call record (as shown in
As an alternative method of use,
It is also envisioned that the conferencing step described above can be executed by any other means for establishing a conference call using the exact same system of
Another advantage of the present disclosure over the prior art recording systems is the ability to record a conversation from a telephone outside of the PBX system. For example, a user working at home could dial the telephone number for the conference recorder and set up a conference with another outside party to create a call record.
As discussed above, one drawback of the system of the present disclosure occurs when the number of calls into the conference recorder exceeds the number of ports configured to a specific hunt group. In one embodiment of the present disclosure, the user will receive a busy signal in such event and will be unable to record the desired telephone call. However, an advantage of the present disclosure lies in the inherent control by the system administrator to create an overflow configuration that would allow the additional calls from a hunt group to connect to a recorder port assigned to another hunt group. In any event, the maximum number of simultaneous recordings is ultimately limited by the number of DSC-OBS cards and thus the number of recorder ports available in a particular recording system.
Yet another advantage of the present disclosure is the possibility of DSC-OBS cards as described in the present disclosure coexisting with DSC-4 cards of the prior art on the same chassis. In other words, certain users or user groups may require “hard-wired” recording capability so that there is never a risk of failure to record a telephone call. Such a situation may exist, for example, with users that are call service agents, where it is common practice to record every telephone call. It is envisioned that DSC-OBS cards and DSC-4 cards are substantially similar in physical dimension and in connection requirements, thus ensuring this interchangeability with prior art technology.
It will be apparent to one of skill in the art that described herein is a novel system and method for producing a telephone conference record. While the invention has been described with reference to specific preferred embodiments, it is not limited to these embodiments. The invention may be modified or varied in many ways and such modifications and variations as would be obvious to one of skill in the art are within the scope and spirit of the invention and are included within the scope of the following claims.
