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Claims  |
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What is claimed:
1. In a messaging environment comprising a first message system and a
second message system, a method comprising the steps of:
receiving one of a voice message, a fax message, and an e-mail message
intended for a subscriber at either of the first and second messaging
systems;
determining a number of stored new messages for said first messaging
system;
determining a number of stored new messages for said second messaging
system;
determining a form of notification; and
sending a notification in said form to the subscriber notifying the
subscriber that the subscriber has received said one message only if said
form is at least one of an e-mail message, a lighted lamp, and a stutter
dial tone, and only if said messaging systems is storing only one of said
first and second said received message and only if the other of said first
and second messaging systems is not storing any new messages.
2. The method recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of
incrementing a counter in the one of said first and second messaging
systems receiving said one message, wherein said steps of determining a
number of new messages said one of said first and second messaging systems
is storing and a number of new messages said other of said first and
second messaging systems is storing comprises:
accessing said counter in the one of said first and second messaging
systems receiving said one message and a second counter in the other of
the first and second messaging systems to determine a number of newly
received messages in each of the first and second messaging systems.
3. The method recited in claim 2, wherein said step of sending said
notification in said form includes sending said notification if said
counter in the one of said first and second messaging systems receiving
said one message equals one, and said second counter in the other of the
first and second messaging systems equals zero.
4. The method recited in claim 2, wherein said step of sending said
notification in said form includes sending said notification regardless of
the number of newly received messages in each of the first and second
messaging systems if said form of notification is at least one of an
outcall and a page.
5. The method recited in claim 4, wherein said step of sending said
notification in said form includes sending said notification if said form
is at least one of an e-mail message, a lighted lamp, and a stutter dial
tone, and if said counter in the one of said first and second messaging
systems receiving said one message equals one, and said second counter in
the other of the first and second messaging systems equals zero.
6. The method recited in claim 1, wherein said step of determining said
form of notification comprises
accessing a database in one of the first and second messaging systems to
determine said form of notification.
7. The method recited in claim 1, further comprising the steps of:
checking a flag in the one of said first and second messaging systems
receiving said one message to determine if said subscriber has retrieved
said one message;
resetting said counter in the one of said first and second messaging
systems receiving said one message to zero when said subscriber has
retrieved said one message;
checking a counter in the other of the first and second messaging systems;
and
deactivating said notification when both said counters equal zero.
8. A messaging environment comprising:
a first messaging system comprising a first message receiver for receiving
a message intended for a subscriber, said message comprising one of a
voice message and a fax message;
a second messaging system comprising a second message receiver for
receiving a message intended for said subscriber, said message comprising
an e-mail message; and
a notification system for sending a notification in a form to said
subscriber notifying said subscriber that said subscriber has received a
message at one of said first messaging system and said second messaging
system only if said form is at least one of an e-mail message, a lighted
lamp, and a stutter dial tone, and only if said messaging system that has
received said message is storing only said received message and only if
said other messaging system is not storing any new messages.
9. The messaging environment recited in claim 8, wherein
said first messaging system comprises a first counter for counting a number
of newly received messages in said first messaging system;
said second messaging system comprises a second counter for counting a
number of newly received messages in said second messaging system; and
said notification system comprises:
means for accessing said first and second counters to determine a number of
newly received messages in each of said first and second messaging
systems; and
means for accessing a database in one of said two messaging systems to
determine said form of said notification.
10. The messaging environment recited in claim 9, further comprising:
means for sending said notification if said counter in said messaging
system receiving said message equals one, and said counter in the other
messaging system equals zero.
11. The messaging environment recited in claim 9, further comprising means
for sending said notification regardless of the number of newly received
messages in each of the two messaging systems if said form of notification
is at least one of an outcall and a page.
12. A voice and data messaging system, comprising:
a first messaging system comprising a first message receiver for receiving
new voice and fax messages and storing said new voice and fax messages and
a first counter for counting a number of new voice and fax messages;
a second messaging system comprising a second message receiver for
receiving and storing new e-mail messages and a second counter for
counting a number of new e-mail messages;
an interface coupling said first messaging system and said second messaging
system; and
an indicator for notifying a subscriber that at least one of a new voice
message, a new fax message, and a new e-mail message has been received
only if said indicator is at least one of an e-mail message, a lighted
lamp, and a stutter dial tone, and only if one of said counters equals
one, and only if the other of said counters equals zero.
13. The voice and data messaging system recited in claim 12, further
comprising means for checking said counters in said first and second
messaging systems and providing the number of new voice and fax messages
and the number of new e-mail messages to said indicator for notifying the
subscriber.
14. The voice and data messaging system recited in claim 13, further
comprising:
means for activating said indicator for notifying the subscriber regardless
of the number of newly received messages in each of the two messaging
systems if said indicator for notifying the subscriber is at least one of
an outcall and a page.
15. The voice and data messaging system recited in claim 12, wherein said
indicator for notifying the subscriber comprises at least one of an
outcall, a page, an e-mail message, a lighted lamp, and a stutter dial
tone.
16. In a messaging environment comprising a first system of a type capable
of receiving at least one of a voice message and a fax message intended
for a subscriber and a second system of a type capable of receiving an
e-mail message intended for the subscriber, apparatus for notifying the
subscriber via the first system that a message has been received at the
second system, comprising:
a database containing information that specifies the type of notification,
the type of notification comprising at least one of an outcall, a page, an
e-mail message, a lighted lamp, and a stutter dial tone;
a first counter containing a number of new messages in said first system;
a second counter containing a number of new messages of said second system;
program code embodied on a computer readable medium that contains
instructions that when executed by a computer causes the computer to
construct a notification message notifying the subscriber that the
subscriber has received said message; and
a service library that sends the notification message regardless of the
number of new messages that are being stored in said two messaging systems
if said form of notification is a page or an outcall, and sending said
notification message if said form is at least one of an e-mail message, a
lighted lamp, and a stutter dial tone, and only if one of said counters
equals one, and only if the other of said counters equals zero. |
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Claims |
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Description |
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FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates in general to message notification systems
used in connection with e-mail and voice/fax messaging systems. More
particularly, the present invention relates to methods and apparatus for
integrating the notification functions of e-mail and voice/fax messaging
subsystems of a Universal Messaging system.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
It has become common practice within the past few years to arrange a
communication system to receive voice messages when a called party is
unavailable. The received message is recorded and an indicator, such as a
lighted lamp, is given to the called party indicating the presence of a
message that has been received.
Unisys Corporation, assignee of the present invention, provides a messaging
system of the type that receives voice and/or fax messages and stores the
messages for later retrieval by subscribers in the form of its Universal
Voice Messaging System (UVMS), which is a network application that
executes on the Unisys Network Applications Platform (the NAP system). The
NAP system is a configuration of hardware and software that provides data
and voice processing capabilities through applications, such as UVMS,
running on a host computer. The NAP system provides the interface between
these applications, called network applications, and a telephone network.
Detailed descriptions concerning the construction and operation of
messaging systems and of the NAP system and the means for developing
network applications, such as UVMS, to run on the NAP system can be found
in: U.S. Pat. No. 5,133,004, Jul. 21, 1992, "Digital Computer Platform for
Supporting Telephone Network Applications"; U.S. Pat. No. 5,138,710, Aug.
11, 1992, "Apparatus and Method for Providing Recoverability in Mass
Storage Data Base Systems Without Audit Trail Mechanisms"; U.S. Pat. No.
5,384,829, Jan. 24, 1995, "Digital Computer Platform for Supporting
Telephone Network Applications"; U.S. Pat. No. 5,323,450, Jun. 21, 1994,
"Telephone Network Applications Platform for Supporting Facsimile
Applications"; U.S. Pat. No. 5,493,606, Feb. 20, 1996, "Multi-Lingual
Prompt Management System for a Network Applications Platform"; U.S. Pat.
No. 5,633,916, May 27, 1997, "Universal Messaging Service Using Single
Voice Grade Telephone Line Within a Client/Server Architecture"; U.S. Pat.
application Ser. No. 08/944,924, filed Oct. 6, 1997, "Enhanced
Multi-Lingual Prompt Management in a Voice Messaging System With Support
for Speech Recognition"; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/964,744,
filed Nov. 5, 1997, "Methods and Apparatus for Providing External Access
to Executable Call Flows of a Network Application"; U.S. patent
application Ser. No. 08/987,571, filed Dec. 11, 1997, "Multiple Language
Electronic Mail Notification of Received Voice and/or Fax Messages"; U.S.
patent application Ser. No. 09/094,126, filed on even date herewith,
titled "Universal Messaging System Providing Integrated Voice, Data and
Fax Messaging Services to PC/Web-based Clients, Including a Session
Manager for Maintaining a Session Between a Messaging Platform and the
Web-based Clients"; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/093,593, filed on
even date herewith, titled "Universal Messaging System Providing
Integrated Voice, Data and Fax Messaging Services to PC/Web-based Clients,
Including a Content Manager for Receiving Information from Content
Providers and Formatting the Same into Multimedia Containers for
Distribution to Web-based Clients"; and U.S. patent application Ser. No.
09/094,266, filed on even date herewith, titled "Universal Messaging
System Providing Integrated Voice, Data and Fax Messaging Services to
PC/Web-based Clients, Including a Large Object Server for Efficiently
Distributing Voice/Fax Messages to Web-based Clients". Each one of these
patents and pending applications is hereby incorporated by reference in
its entirety.
A network application, like UVMS, comprises one or more call flows that
determine the functionality of the application. A call flow defines how a
call is processed from the time it is connected until it is disconnected.
It determines how the network application will react to various
telephony-related events. In particular, a call flow specifies each
function or processing step to be executed during a telephone call, the
possible results for each function, the decision path to be followed based
on the result, and each voice prompt to be played during the course of the
telephone call. Certain call flows also interact with a subscriber to
allow the subscriber to set certain user-defined parameters and to enable
certain features of the network application.
UVMS is a voice/fax messaging system in which subscribers are each assigned
a unique mailbox in which received voice and/or fax messages are stored
for later retrieval and playback. A system administrator controls the
system features that a subscriber is able to use through a mechanism known
as a class of service (COS). COSs are sets of features assigned to
different mailboxes. COSs are created and assigned to subscribers by the
system administrator and enable the administrator to control the
subscribers' use of UVMS features. One group of features that can be
enabled in a given COS relate to the manner in which a subscriber can be
informed of the receipt of a voice and/or fax message. For example, a
message waiting indicator feature can be enabled to provide either a
stutter dial tone or a flashing light on the subscriber's telephone to
indicate that a voice message has been received and is ready for playback
from a subscriber's mailbox.
As data terminals become popular, people have begun to communicate over the
data network by sending e-mail messages to one another. These messages
arrive at the recipient's host computer and are queued waiting for the
recipient to request their presentation in display form on the screen of a
terminal connected to the host computer. This arrangement presents
problems in that terminals are not always available for use by a
recipient. For example, if a data message were to be sent to an electronic
address and the addressee were to be away at a location remote from his or
her host computer, the received message would not be available to the
addressee. Of equal concern, the addressee would not even know that a
message has been delivered. The problems compound when users have several
different e-mail services. Users must log on to each such service just to
find out if messages are waiting.
As a consequence, a user of a plurality of messaging systems typically must
individually monitor the status of all of them. The difficulty with
existing voicemail service systems is that a user must query this system
as well as all the other message service systems to locate and retrieve
all messages.
Thus, it would be advantageous if the receiver could receive notification
of new messages of different systems, whether he had access to all or to
only one of the mail systems normally at his disposal. In other words, it
would be advantageous to integrate the messaging systems efficiently,
particularly voicemail and e-mail systems because of their relative
prevalence, such that notification of all types of mail items is provided
at one location or in one form.
Various schemes have been proposed for informing the users in a unified
manner of the arrival of messages in any of a plurality of messaging
systems. Illustrative examples of such schemes are described in U.S. Pat.
No. 4,476,349, 4,612,416, 4,646,346, and 4,837,798.
The prior art typically has a message store for the voice/fax messages and
a message store for the e-mail. Typically, both message stores duplicate
storage or add dummy headers to track all the messages in all the stores.
However, this requires additional storage space.
In a universal messaging system in which different messaging systems (e.g.,
voice/fax and e-mail) are integrated to provide the "universal" solution,
there is a need to be able to handle notification of new messages,
regardless of which system (voice/fax or e-mail) receives the message,
while minimizing the amount of storage space that is used. The present
invention provides a solution to this problem.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed to a method in a messaging environment
comprising two messaging systems. The method comprises the steps of
receiving one of a voice message, a fax message, and an e-mail message
intended for a subscriber at either of the two messaging systems; checking
a counter in the messaging system receiving the one message; and sending a
notification to the subscriber, responsive to the counter, notifying the
subscriber that the subscriber has received the one message, the
notification having a form of at least one of an outcall, a page, an
e-mail message, a lighted lamp, and stutter dial tone.
According to one aspect of the present invention, the method further
comprises the step of incrementing the counter in the messaging system
receiving the one message. The step of sending the notification comprises:
accessing the counter in the messaging system receiving the one message
and a second counter in the other of the two messaging systems to
determine a number of newly received messages in each of the two messaging
systems; accessing a database in one of the two messaging systems to
determine the form of the notification; and sending the notification in
the form responsive to the number of newly received messages in each of
the two messaging systems.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, notification is sent
if the counter in the messaging system receiving the one message equals
one, and the second counter in the other of the two messaging systems
equals zero.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, notification
is sent regardless of the number of newly received messages in each of the
two messaging systems if the form of notification is at least one of an
outcall and a page.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, notification
is sent if the form is at least one of an e-mail message, a lighted lamp,
and a stutter dial tone, and if the counter in the messaging system
receiving the one message equals one, and the second counter in the other
of the two messaging systems equals zero.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the step of
sending a notification comprises the steps of: determining the messaging
system that received the one message and increasing a new message counter
therein; determining the number of new messages the messaging system is
storing; determining the number of new messages the other messaging system
is storing; and sending the notification responsive to the number of new
messages the messaging system is storing and the number of new messages
the other messaging system is storing.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the method
further comprises the steps of: checking a flag in the messaging system
receiving the one message to determine if the subscriber has retrieved the
one message; resetting the counter in the messaging system receiving the
one message to zero when the subscriber has retrieved the one message;
checking a counter in the other of the two messaging systems; and
deactivating said notification when both counters equal zero.
In a further embodiment within the scope of the present invention, a
messaging environment is provided that comprises: a first messaging system
comprising means for receiving a message intended for a subscriber, the
message comprising one of a voice message and a fax message; a second
messaging system comprising means for receiving a message intended for the
subscriber, the message comprising an e-mail message; and means for
sending a notification to the subscriber via the first messaging system
notifying the subscriber that the subscriber has received a message at one
of the first messaging system and the second messaging system. The
notification preferably has a form of at least one of an outcall, a page,
an e-mail message, a lighted lamp, and a stutter dial tone.
According to further aspects of the invention, the first messaging system
comprises a first counter for counting a number of newly received messages
in the first messaging system; the second messaging system comprises a
second counter for counting a number of newly received messages in the
second messaging system; and the means for sending a notification
comprises: means for accessing the first and second counters to determine
a number of newly received messages in each of the first and second
messaging systems; means for accessing a database in one of the two
messaging systems to determine the form of the notification; and means for
sending the notification in the form responsive to the number of newly
received messages in each of the first and second messaging systems.
Another embodiment within the scope of this invention includes a voice and
data messaging system, comprising: a first messaging system comprising
means for receiving new voice and fax messages and storing the new voice
and fax messages and counter means for counting a number of new voice and
fax messages; a second messaging system comprising means for receiving and
storing new e-mail messages and counter means for counting a number of new
e-mail messages; an interface coupling the first messaging system and the
second messaging system; and means for notifying a subscriber that at
least one of a new voice message, a new fax message, and a new e-mail
message has been received.
In another embodiment within the scope of this invention, in a messaging
environment comprising a first system of a type capable of receiving at
least one of a voice message and a fax message intended for a subscriber
and a second system of a type capable of receiving an e-mail message
intended for the subscriber, apparatus for notifying the subscriber via
the first system that a message has been received at the second system,
comprising: a database containing information that specifies the type of
notification; a first counter containing a number of new messages in the
first system; a second counter containing a number of new messages of the
second system; program code embodied on a computer readable medium that
contains instructions that when executed by a computer causes the computer
to construct a notification message notifying the subscriber that the
subscriber has received the message; and a service library that sends the
notification message.
The foregoing and other aspects of the present invention will become
apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when
considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1A shows a messaging system embodying methods and apparatus for
notifying a subscriber of a received voice, fax, and/or e-mail message in
accordance with the present invention;
FIG. 1B shows another messaging system embodying methods and apparatus for
notifying a subscriber of a received voice, fax, and/or e-mail message in
accordance with the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a call flow diagram illustrating the means by which a subscriber
enables operation of the methods and apparatus of the present invention in
the messaging system of FIG. 1A;
FIG. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating both the operation of the system of
FIG. 1A and a preferred embodiment of a method of the present invention;
and
FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating a further exemplary embodiment of a
method in accordance with the present invention.
DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS AND BEST MODE
The present invention is directed to a system and method for notifying
subscribers to first and second communications networks that a message has
been received at either the first communications network (such as a voice
messaging system) or the second communications network (such as an e-mail
messaging system). A subscriber receives notification at one point
regardless of which communications network receives the new message. An
exemplary system and method is described in which subscribers to a
universal voice messaging system (UVMS) which handles voice and fax
messages are also subscribers to a message handling system (MHS) which
handles e-mail messages. The methods and apparatus of the present
invention may take the form of program code (i.e., instructions) embodied
in tangible media, such as floppy diskettes, CD-ROMs, hard drives, tapes,
or any other machine-readable storage medium, wherein, when the program
code is loaded into and executed by a machine, such as a computer, the
machine becomes an apparatus for practicing the invention. The methods and
apparatus of the present invention may also be embodied in the form of
program code that is transmitted over some transmission medium, such as
over electrical wiring or cabling, through fiber optics, or via any other
form of transmission, wherein, when the program code is received and
loaded into and executed by a machine, such as a computer, the machine
becomes an apparatus for practicing the invention. When implemented on a
general-purpose processor, the program code combines with the processor to
provide a unique apparatus that operates analogously to specific logic
circuits.
FIG. 1A shows a preferred implementation of the system of the present
invention. A first messaging system, such as a universal voice messaging
system, or UVMS, 105 is a stand-alone application, contained within a
network applications platform (NAP) 115, which preferably handles
voicemail and faxmail, and comprises a database 106 | | |
