Patent Application
20070156811
The present invention relates generally to the fields of data networks and communication systems; more specifically, to systems and methods aimed at managing conference sessions for groups of individuals communicating over a telephony network.
Conferencing systems and methods, in which participants communicate in a conference session or meeting over existing voice and data networks, have been in existence for some time. Recent examples of conference calling systems include U.S. Pat. No. 6,865,540, which teaches a method and apparatus for providing group calls via the Internet; U.S. Pat. No. 6,876,734, which teaches an Internet-enabled conferencing system accommodating public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Internet Protocol (IP) traffic; U.S. Pat. No. 6,931,001, which discloses a system for interconnecting packet-switched and circuit-switched voice communications; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,671,262, which teaches a system with conference servers for combining IP packet streams in a conference call into combined packet streams, such that the combined IP packet stream utilizes no more bandwidth than each of the original packet streams.
A variety of different features and approaches for scheduling, control, and management of conference call sessions are also known. For instance, a conferencing system that facilitates a conference call by enabling a participant in the call session to determine and categorize the identities of the other participants is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,931,113. A conference calling system in which each participant may individually control incoming audio streams from other participants, and in which participants may communicate privately with each other in the context of the conference call, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,501,739. U.S. Pat. No. 6,816,469 teaches an IP telephony network and PSTN network that allows one or more call waiting callers to dynamically join in an existing multiple party conference call session.
In addition, commercially-available IP communication system products such as Cisco's MeetingPlace™ conferencing application allow users to schedule meeting conferences in advance or, alternatively, to set up conferences immediately by dialing out to participant parties. Cisco MeetingPlace™ is typically deployed on a corporate network behind the firewall, and facilitates scheduling of business conferences from a touch-tone or voice over IP (VOIP) telephone, or a computer, using various software clients, such as Microsoft® Outlook, or a web browser.
Often times during a meeting or conference session certain participants want to exchange messages or engage in discussions without disturbing the other participants of the conference session. For instance, in the middle of a conference session several participants may want to have a sidebar conversation to discuss some important topic. Existing conferencing systems such as Cisco's MeetingPlace software product allow a subset of meeting participants to enter a “breakout” session or “room” in which individuals can establish their own private communication group session apart from the main conference session by simply pressing a predetermined keypad code or sequence (e.g., by pressing #1(1-9)). In the case where conference participants are in front of a PC, then they can communicate using an instant messaging (IM) client or similar tool to invite selected participants to enter a breakout session.
One problem that arises in prior art conferencing systems, however, is that often time participants have dialed into the conference session using a telephone device, such as a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone, rather than from a PC. In such cases, an invitation sent to a telephone participant to join a breakout session typically produces an audible signal or tone (e.g., voice interruption, ringing, beeping, etc.) that disturbs the other meeting participants.
Some conferencing systems support question and answer (Q&A) sessions, wherein participants (usually in listen-mode only) may send questions to a queue without interrupting the conference flow. But in these systems the questions are commonly submitted via a non-telephony interface from a computer (e.g., Web, email, IM, etc.). Additionally, in conference systems with Q&A session capabilities the questions and answers are typically heard by all participants in the meeting, which is different from sending and receiving offline messages between specified participants without disturbing the other participants to the conference session.
Various mechanisms also exist for leaving an offline message to notify the other attendees that a certain participant will be absent from a scheduled meeting or conference session. In Cisco's MeetingPlace™ software product, for example, this type of offline message is heard by every participant as they join the conference session. What is missing from the prior art, however, is a mechanism for sending an offline message to participants who have already dialed in using a telephone device while the conference session is in progress and without disturbing the other participants.
What is needed therefore is a conferencing system and method that overcomes the drawbacks of the prior art and which facilitates the sending of offline messages to one or more participants during a conference session without disturbing the other participants, regardless of device used to dial into the session.
The present invention will be understood more fully from the detailed description that follows and from the accompanying drawings, which however, should not be taken to limit the invention to the specific embodiments shown, but are for explanation and understanding only.
A conferencing system and method that allows a meeting participant to send/receive offline messages to/from any other meeting participant during a conference session without disturbing the other participants to the session is described. In the following description specific details are set forth, such as device types, system configurations, protocols, methods, etc., in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. However, persons having ordinary skill in the relevant arts will appreciate that these specific details may not be needed to practice the present invention.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, a conferencing system and method is provided in which a user interface (e.g., graphical, touch, or voice) is utilized by participants for sending and receiving messages during a conference session. When a participant (i.e., user) is logged into the system, a conferencing module or application adds a special “invite to breakout” soft key to the user's telephone device. When the user presses this softkey on his telephone device the user is presented with a conference participant list. The user may then select desired recipients and then send an offline message inviting those recipients to join a breakout session. The invitation may be in the form of a pre-configured request. Each recipient can either accept or reject the invitation by pressing an appropriate key, e.g., by pressing an “accept” or “reject” soft key or by sending a corresponding Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) signal via the keypad. Message recipients that accept the invitation are automatically transferred or moved into the specified breakout room or session. In a specific implementation, the breakout room specified in the invitation message is automatically selected by a messaging manager program or module based on availability.
It is appreciated that the media path for the conference participants may include audio (voice) and video transmissions across a variety of different networks (e.g., Internet, intranet, PSTN, etc.), protocols (e.g., IP, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)), with connections that span across multiple services, systems, and devices (e.g., private branch exchange (PBX) systems, VoIP gateways, etc.). In a specific embodiment, the present invention may be implemented by software or hardware (firmware) installed in an IP communications system that includes components such as Cisco System's IP Communicator, Call Manager, MeetingPlace, Softphone (a PC that has phone capabilities installed), and other IP phone/communication products. Alternative embodiments of the present invention may be implemented in PBX, telephony, telephone, and other telecommunications systems.
Referring to
In the embodiment shown, conference module 16 is also shown connected with a natural language automatic speech recognition (ASR) module 18 for interpreting and parsing speech of the participants, and a messaging manager module or server 20 that includes a set of memory spaces or message queues 21 for storing/holding messages sent by a participant and awaiting retrieval by the intended recipients. In one embodiment, messaging manager module 20 may use the speech recognition system to collect the list of names of message recipients. For instance, the messaging manager unit may automatically generate the speech-recognition-grammar based on the list of participants present in the meeting. Messaging manager 20 may also utilize or incorporate standard speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS) converter modules. It is appreciated that ASR module 18, messaging manager 20, IVR unit 19, and other modules/units may be incorporated into conferencing module 16, or included in other components of system 10. (Whether integrated together or implemented as separate components, module 16, ASR 18, IVR 19 and messaging manager 20 may be collectively referred to as a conferencing subsystem.)
Practitioners in the arts will understand that each of the component modules and units shown in
In one embodiment, messaging manager 20, upon starting a meeting or conference session, creates or allocates a temporary message queue for each participant that joins the meeting. In
It is appreciated that more than one type of message indicator may be utilized at any time to notify a participant that a message is waiting for them. That is, in certain implementations, a combination of alerts or indicators may be utilized to notify the recipient(s) that a message is waiting for them. Furthermore, even though in this example the three conference participants shown in
In the above-described embodiment, after the participant listens to their message, the message is deleted from message queue 21 by messaging manager 20. Also, once a participant leaves the meeting application (i.e., drops out of the conference session) his or her message queue is deactivated or deleted.
Messages may be sent/received anytime during the conference session by any of the conference participants. By way of example, block 26 in
Regardless of how the message recipients are chosen, once selected, participant “A” may send the message using any one of a variety of mechanisms, including voice, keypad, softkey, or mouse button (“right-click”) commands. If the message is a text message and recipient is using a device incapable of presenting text (e.g., a non-IP telephone device without a display window) then the message manager unit may convert the message to a voice prompt using a text-to-speech converter. The message may be stored either as text or as digitally-recorded speech in the recipient's message queue (block 27).
After the message has been sent and placed in the appropriate message queue(s), the message recipients are notified of the availability of the message using one or more of the different message indicators or alerts described above (block 28). At that point, the recipient(s) may receive the message in a variety of different ways, depending on the device(s) available to the recipient (block 29). For example, a participant who has access to a touch-tone telephone may, at any time, press #69 to receive the message. Pressing the appropriate keypad command which would take him to the message manager's receive IVR menu. The recipient would then interact with IVR menu script to play the message, after which time the message is deleted from his queue.
In the case a message recipient who is logged onto a PC that is running an IM client or tool, the message notification may be an IM message that pops up in a window on the screen of their PC. By way of example,
In certain embodiments, a participant may send a message to invite another participant to enter a breakout session that includes a piece of explanatory text in a subject field that is typically communicated via IM. The conferencing system may detect that the receiving participant (i.e., invitee) is dialed into the conference session through a telephone device or connection (e.g., a voice (POTS) connection) that does not accommodate a subject field. In such a case, the conferencing module may utilize a text-to-speech (TTS) converter to transmit the subject field and text message to the POTS invitee as speech. The conferencing system may also accommodate an inviter participant who is dialed in via a voice-only connection, wherein the inviter records his invitation as speech and the system converts that speech to a text message that may be delivered to the invitee via IM or a display screen of an IP phone.
The graphical user interface (GUI) shown in
As discussed previously, if the message recipient does not have a PC that he is logged into, or is not running an IM tool, message notification may occur via a whisper tone alert message, a periodic beeping tone, blinking light, and/or a text message displayed on a display screen or window of the recipient's telephone device. In another embodiment, the message manager may not wait for the recipient to retrieve the message; instead, the message manager may directly whisper the message to the recipient via their telephone in addition to placing the message into the message queue. In certain embodiments, the sender may also be provided with control over the type of notification or message delivery mechanism to be used. For instance, the sender may tag the offline message by marking it directly “whisperable” to the recipient, thereby obviating the need for retrieval by the recipient.
The IP telephone shown in
In yet another embodiment, the conferencing application may be configured to obtain presence information from each of the conference participants in order to determine the appropriate mechanism or channel to present the message and/or notification to the recipient. For example, conferencing module 16 may determine that since participant 13 (see
The example of
In an alternative embodiment, where the message was created using an IM client and stored in the recipient's message queue as text, the conferencing system may convert the message into audible speech using a TTS converter for delivery to a receiving participant who is dialed into the conference session via a voice-only connection.
It should be understood that elements of the present invention may also be provided as a computer program product which may include a machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which may be used to program a computer (e.g., a processor or other electronic device) to perform a sequence of operations. Alternatively, the operations may be performed by a combination of hardware and software. The machine-readable medium may include, but is not limited to, floppy diskettes, optical disks, CD-ROMs, and magneto-optical disks, ROMs, RAMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, magnet or optical cards, propagation media or other type of media/machine-readable medium suitable for storing electronic instructions. For example, elements of the present invention may be downloaded as a computer program product, wherein the program may be transferred from a remote computer or telephonic device to a requesting process by way of data signals embodied in a carrier wave or other propagation medium via a communication link (e.g., a modem or network connection).
Additionally, although the present invention has been described in conjunction with specific embodiments, numerous modifications and alterations are well within the scope of the present invention. For example, the conference messaging mechanism of the present invention is not limited to simply sending messages or invitations for the purpose of inviting participants into a breakout room; rather, the conference messaging system and method of the present invention may be used for sending any sort of message during a conference session. For example, a participant may want to tell another participant that he intends to drop out of the meeting shortly and to request that the other person meet him in his office after the conference session is over. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
