Patent Application
20160253631
Currently, there are a number of conference solutions for enabling people to conduct live meetings, audio conferences, video conferences, conferences, presentations, or other types of gatherings via the Internet, the public switched telephone network (PSTN), or other voice and/or data networks. Participants typically use a telephone, computer, or other communication device that connects to a conference system. The meetings typically include an audio component and a visual component, such as, a shared presentation, video, whiteboard, or other multimedia, text, graphics, etc. While these types of conference solutions have become an indispensable form of communication for many businesses and individuals, it remains difficult to manage and control scheduled conferences in a consistent and convenient manner.
With many individuals, organizations, and enterprises having a preference for one of the various available conferencing solutions, it can be problematic to manage and schedule conferences in an increasingly complicated landscape. This problem is further complicated with the various available software applications for managing calendars, events, contacts, conferences, customer relationships, etc. For example, it is not unusual for an individual user to manage personal contacts, corporate contacts, social network contacts, and customer contacts with different software applications, websites, or application service providers, while being forced to organize phone calls, conference calls, online conferences, and in-person meetings with these contacts across multiple conferencing tools.
Despite the many advantages and commercial success of existing conferencing solutions, there remains a need in the art for improved systems, methods, and computer programs for managing conference and calendar events in a convenient manner.
Various embodiments of systems, methods, and computer programs are disclosed for providing an integrated calendar/conferencing system. One such system comprises a conferencing system and a server. The conferencing system is configured to establish online conferences associated with a user having a corresponding user account. The user account comprises conference event data for one or more scheduled online conferences. The server is in communication with the conferencing system and comprises a user database, an event analysis component, and a presentation component. The user database stores the user account and the conference event data for the one or more scheduled online conferences. The event analysis component is executed by a processor and comprises logic configured to: obtain calendar event data associated with the user from one or more remote application providers; and analyze the calendar event data and the stored conference event data associated with the user to identify matching custom content to be presented to the user. The presentation component is configured to provide the identified custom content to a mobile calendar application running on a portable communication device operated by the user. The mobile calendar application is configured to simultaneously display an integrated view of the calendar event data and the conference event data in a first display portion and a custom content area in a second display portion. The custom content area comprises the matching custom content corresponding to one or more of the calendar event data and the conference event data displayed in the first display portion.
Another embodiment is computer program embodied in a computer-readable medium and executed by a processor for providing an integrated calendar/conferencing service. The computer program comprises logic configured to: launch a mobile application and authenticate a user with a conferencing system via a communication network, the user having a user account comprising conference event data for one or more scheduled online conferences being managed and controlled by the conferencing system; determine a current portion of the conference event data to be displayed to the user via the mobile application; send a request to the conferencing system via the communication network for calendar event data associated with the user and corresponding to the current portion of the conference event to be retrieved by the conferencing system from one or more remote applications; in response to the request, receive from the conferencing system the corresponding calendar event data and targeted presentation content retrieved from a server database, the targeted presentation content selected to match one or more keywords identified from the current portion of the conference event data and the corresponding calendar event data; and display the current portion of the conference event data and the corresponding calendar event data as an integrated calendar/conference view in a first display portion of the mobile application and simultaneously display the matching targeted presentation content in a second display portion.
Various embodiments of systems, methods, and computer programs are disclosed for providing an integrated calendar/conferencing system with targeted content management and presentation. As described below in more detail with reference to
The smart mobile calendar application automatically obtains conference information (e.g., dial-in numbers, passcodes, uniform resource locators (URLs) for online meetings, etc.) from the conferencing system and remote applications to enable the user to conveniently initiate telephone calls, conference calls, or web meetings directly from the application. The integrated calendar/conferencing system includes an analytics engine that analyzes the native and remote data to identify targeted content to be displayed to the user via the smart mobile calendar application. The targeted content may be selected based on calendar event data, scheduled online meeting data, agendas, locations, dates, participant or contact data, social networking data, or any other useful data stored by the conferencing system and/or accessible from the remote application providers. The targeted content may include, for example, corporate announcements, expert meeting tips, relevant information about scheduled meetings or participants, sponsored promotions, advertisements, product/service offerings, weather information, or news information.
The portable communication device 104 may comprise any desirable computing device configured to communicate with the conferencing system 102 and server(s) 116 via the communication networks 106. In an embodiment, the portable communication device 104 may comprise a mobile computing device, a smart phone, a cellular telephone, a soft phone, a VoIP phone, a web-enabled electronic book reader, a tablet computer, gaming console, navigation device, or any other portable device capable of communicating with the conferencing system 102 and/or the server(s) 112 via one or more communication networks. As illustrated in
The portable communication device 104 may include network interface devices 140, a display 146, a microphone 148, a speaker 150, and a processor 152 for executing software and/or firmware associated with a memory 142. The networking interface devices 140 enable communication with the conferencing system 102 via communication networks 106. The microphone 148 and speaker 150 may be used for voice communications with the conferencing system 102 in an audio conference 118, a PSTN call, a VoIP call, a video conference, or other online conference established via the conferencing system 102. The online conference may be established, and provided via a conference user interface 114, such as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/789,993 entitled “Systems, Methods, and Computer Programs for Providing a Conference User Interface,” and filed on May 28, 2010, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. The conference user interface 114 may be displayed on the display 146. In an embodiment, the conferencing system 102 may be configured to support, among other platforms, a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) conferencing platform such as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/637,291 entitled “VoIP Conferencing,” filed on Dec. 12, 2006, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. It should be further appreciated that the conferencing system 102 may support various alternative platforms, technologies, protocols, standards, features, etc.
As further illustrated in
The conferencing system 102 may incorporate the integrated calendar/conferencing system 112, which generally comprises an event analysis component 130 and a presentation component 132. The event analysis component 130 and the presentation component 132 may be embodied in memory and executed by one or more processors.
At steps 212 and 216, the event analysis component 132 may receive calendar event data 214 and participant data 218 from one or more of the third party application providers 120. The event analysis component 132 analyzes the remotely obtained calendar event data 214 and the natively stored conference event data 210. The analysis algorithms may be configured to identify relevant keywords 222 based on the combined calendar and conference data, as well as other relevant data, such as, participant data 218, meeting location data, and meeting dates and times. At step 220, the event analysis component 132 may perform a database look-up to a targeted content database 136 using the keywords 222 generated by the analysis algorithms. The targeted content database 136 comprises various types of content that may be presented to users via the mobile calendar application 110, including, for example, corporate announcements, expert meeting tips, relevant information about scheduled meetings or participants, sponsored promotions, advertisements, product/service offerings, weather information, or news information. The targeted content database 136 may be incorporated in the conference system 102 or accessed remotely from another service provider, web service, search engine, etc.
In response to a database query, custom content 226 may be identified that matches the keywords 222. At step 228, the custom content 226 (or links thereto) may be returned to the event analysis component 132. At step 228, the event analysis component 132 may communicate with the presentation component 132 to initiate presentation of the combined calendar event data 214 and conference event data 210, participant data 218, and the matching custom content 226 to the mobile calendar application 110 (step 230).
In the embodiment of
As illustrated in
It should be appreciated that one or more of the process or method descriptions associated with the flow charts or block diagrams above may represent modules, segments, logic or portions of code that include one or more executable instructions for implementing logical functions or steps in the process. It should be further appreciated that the logical functions may be implemented in software, hardware, firmware, or any combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the logical functions may be implemented in software or firmware that is stored in memory or non-volatile memory and that is executed by hardware (e.g., microcontroller) or any other processor(s) or suitable instruction execution system associated with the computer system 100. Furthermore, the logical functions may be embodied in any computer readable medium for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device, such as a computer-based system, processor-containing system, or other system associated with the computer system 100 that can fetch the instructions from the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device and execute the instructions.
It should be noted that this disclosure has been presented with reference to one or more exemplary or described embodiments for the purpose of demonstrating the principles and concepts of the invention. The invention is not limited to these embodiments. As will be understood by persons skilled in the art, in view of the description provided herein, many variations may be made to the embodiments described herein and all such variations are within the scope of the invention.
