Abstract:
When one party to an active call has momentarily stepped away from the call that has not been put on hold, the other party can record and leave a message for the party that stepped away, and then hang up. The call is monitored for return of the party that stepped away. When the returned party begins to speak, the message is immediately played to the returned party in response. In a conference, after a conferee who wishes to leave the conference, records a message and hangs up, the conference is monitored for either a break in the conversation or conversation directed to the party that left, and in response the message is played to the other conferees.

Description:
TECHNICAL FIELD 
     This invention relates to real-time communications, such as telephone calls, and to messaging within the context of a real-time communication. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     It often happens during a real-time communication between parties, such as a telephone call, that one of the parties has to momentarily step away from the communication. The one party that is stepping away will likely leave the communication active and just set down their communication endpoint without putting the other party or parties on hold. The other party or parties may become impatient after a while, and may wish to leave a message for the one party that stepped away, and then hang up. But, without having been put on hold, the other party or parties are currently not provided with a mechanism by means of which they can leave a message for the one party. 
     U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,704,565 and 5,930,339 describe systems that allow a party that has been put on hold to leave a message for the hold-initiating party. These solutions do not enable a party who has not been put on hold to leave a message for the other party to the call. 
     A further disadvantage of these prior art systems is that the hold-initiating party must dial into a message system in order to retrieve the message. It would be desirable if the party could receive the message immediately upon returning to the present call. 
     Also, in a conference situation, one of the conferees may wish to drop off of the conference, but does not wish to interrupt the conference by announcing his or her intention to drop off. It would be desirable if a conferee could leave a message for receipt by the conferees immediately either upon a break in the conference conversation or upon the conversation being directed to him or her. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     This invention is directed to solving these and other problems and disadvantages of the prior arts. According to one embodiment of the invention, one party to a presently-active communication between two (or more) parties—that is, a communication that has not been disconnected, transferred to a messaging system, put on hold, parked, or otherwise disconnected between the parties—can leave a message for the other party, and the other party receives the message as soon as presence on the communication of the other party is detected (illustratively, as soon as the other party returns to the call). The other party preferably receives the message automatically, and does not have to take any action, such as access any messaging system, establish a new connection, or press any keys, to receive the message. 
     According to another embodiment of this invention, a party to a conference can leave a message for the other conferees, and the conferees receive the message at a suitable time, such as either during a break in the conference conversation or when the conversation is directed to that party. Thus, the party preferably does not need to interrupt the conference to notify the other participants of his or her dropping off. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING 
       These and other features and advantages of the invention will become more apparent from considering the following description of an illustrative embodiment of the invention together with the drawing, in which: 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram of a communication system that includes an illustrative embodiment of the invention; 
         FIG. 2  is a functional flow diagram of actions of a first party to a communication in the system of  FIG. 1 ; 
         FIG. 3  is a functional flow diagram of actions of a second party to the communication in the system of  FIG. 1 ; and 
         FIG. 4  is a functional flow diagram of operations of the system of  FIG. 1  cooperative with the actions shown in  FIGS. 2 and 3 . 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       FIG. 1  shows an illustrative real-time communications system, illustratively a voice or a multimedia communication system. In its simplest form, the system includes two or more end-user communication devices, referred to as endpoints  102 ,  104  and  105 , interconnected by a communications network  106 . The communications system of  FIG. 1  may be any desired type of system—analog or digital, circuit-switched or packet-switched, a hybrid of the above, etc. Depending upon the type of communications system, network  106  may include one or more servers  112 - 114 —such as switches in the case of a circuit-switched system or routers in a packet-switched system, for example. 
     One or more of network  106  and endpoints  102  and  104  are equipped with messaging functionality  108 ,  110 ,  118 . In the case of network  106 , the messaging functionality may be implemented either in one or more servers  112  and  114 , or as a separate messaging system  110 . Messaging functionality  108 ,  110 ,  118  is illustratively voice messaging, although it can be any other desired form of messaging functionality, such as text messaging or multimedia messaging, for example. Messaging functionality  108 ,  110 ,  118 , may be implemented in any desired form, such as hardware, firmware, software, or any combination thereof. The form and locus of the messaging functionality is substantially unimportant to the scope of the present invention. 
     One or more of network  106  and endpoints  102  and  104  are further equipped with presence-detection functionality—illustratively voice-activity detection (VAD)  109 ,  119 —for detecting presence of a party on the communication. In one embodiment of the invention, the entity that is equipped with VAD  109 ,  119  is the same entity that is equipped with messaging functionality  108 ,  118 . In another embodiment, the equipped entities are different. 
     Functionality of the communications system of  FIG. 1  according to an embodiment of the invention is shown in  FIG. 4 , while  FIGS. 2 and 3  show the actions user 1   122  and user 2   124  of endpoints  102  and  104 , respectively, that are involved in an illustrative example of the invention. Assume that user 1   122  and user 2   124  are engaged in an active real-time communication with each other through their endpoints  102  and  104 , at steps  200  and  300  of  FIGS. 2 and 3 , respectively. Further assume that user 1   122  temporarily stops communicating via endpoint  102 , at step  202  of  FIG. 2 . For example, user 1   122  leaves endpoint  102  to answer the door, or to look something up, etc. 
     Significantly, user 1   122  maintains the communication in an active state. That is, he or she does not disconnect endpoint  102  from endpoint  104  by placing the communication on hold, parking the communication, transferring the communication to another endpoint or entity, etc., nor does he or she terminate the communication session of the communication. Thus, the communication remains in an active state, and user 2   124  of endpoint  104  is left waiting on the call, at step  302  of  FIG. 3   
     Now suppose that user 2   124  gets tired of waiting for user 1   122  to return to the call, as determined at step  304 , and instead of waiting further, he or she wants to leave a message for user 1   122 , as determined at step  306 . Alternatively, an entity of the system of  FIG. 1  detects absence of one party from the call, through a lack of communications traffic (e.g., silence) on the call, for a predetermined period of time, and in response prompts user 2   124  to indicate his or her desire as to how to proceed. In either case, user 2   124 , signals his or her desire via endpoint  104 , at step  308 , such as by actuating a particular actuator on endpoint  104 . This results in user 2   124  being connected to messaging functionality  108 ,  110 , or  118 , at step  402  of  FIG. 4 . How this result is carried out depends on which messaging functionality is present. If messaging functionality  108  is present on endpoint  104 , the signal is received internally in endpoint  104 , at step  400  of  FIG. 4 , and endpoint  104  connects user 2   124  via its user interface to messaging  108  in endpoint  104 , at step  402 . If messaging functionality  118  is present on near-end server  114 , endpoint  104  sends the signaling to server  114 . Server  114  receives the signal, at step  400 , and in response connects endpoint  104  to messaging  118  at server  114 . If messaging functionality  110  is present, endpoint  104  sends the signaling to server  114 . Server  114  receives the signal, at step  400 , and in response connects endpoint  104  to messaging functionality  110 . If messaging functionality  118  is present in far-end server  112 , endpoint  104  sends the user&#39;s signal to server  112  through server  114 . Server  112  receives the signal, at step  400 , and in response connects endpoint  104  to messaging  118  at server  112 . If messaging functionality  108  is present on endpoint  102 , endpoint  104  sends the user&#39;s signal to endpoint  102  through network  106 . Endpoint  102  receives the signal, at step  400 , and in response connects endpoint  104  to messaging  108  in endpoint  102 . 
     Whichever messaging functionality  108 ,  110 ,  118  gets connected to endpoint  104  now prompts user 2   124  to leave a message for user 1   122 , at step  310  of  FIG. 3 , and the connected messaging functionality records the message, at step  404  of  FIG. 4 . After leaving the message, user 2   124  hangs up or otherwise terminates the communication, at step  312  of  FIG. 3 , and consequently user 2   124  gets disconnected from the messaging functionality, at step  406  of  FIG. 4 . 
     The presence-detection functionality—in this example VAD  109  or  119  of whichever entity  102 ,  104 ,  112 ,  114  connected user 2   124  to the messaging functionality—now begins to monitor the communication for return of user 1   122  to the communication, at step  408 . When user 1   122  returns and resumes his or her participation in the communication—by saying “hello” or “sorry . . . ”, for example—at step  204  of  FIG. 2 , the monitoring VAD  109  or  119  detects and signals the return of user 1   122 , at step  410  of  FIG. 4 . In response to the signaling, the entity  102 ,  104 ,  112 ,  114  that is associated with detecting VAD  109  or  119  connects the messaging that recorded the message to endpoint  102  and causes the messaging to play the message to user 1   122 , at step  412 . User 1   122  receives the message, at step  206  of  FIG. 2 . The same entity  102 ,  104 ,  112 ,  114  then disconnects the messaging from endpoint  102 , at step  414 , and user 1   122  hangs up or otherwise terminates the communication, at step  208  of  FIG. 2 . The messaging entity  108  or  118  can provide user 1   122  with other standard features like save message, delete message, etc. 
     In an alternative embodiment, one or more additional endpoints  105  (see  FIG. 1 ) may be involved in the communication, which is now a conference. The conference is conventional and conventionally implemented. For example, a server  114  of network  106  implements the conference, where server  114  may illustratively be a private branch exchange (PBX) or a central conference bridge server. In addition to VAD  119 , server  114  is equipped with speech-recognition functionality  117 . A participant  102 - 105  in the conference leaves a message for the other conference participants in the manner described above, and then drops out of the conference. VAD  119  and speech-recognition functionality  117  then monitor the conference for a suitable moment at which to play the message out to the other conference participants. VAD  119  monitors the conference for a pause in the conversation, i.e., a lack of voice activity, while speech-recognition functionality  117  monitors the conference for any conversation directed to the participant who dropped off, e.g., for occurrence of the dropped-off participant&#39;s name in the conversation. When the monitored-for activity occurs, server  114  causes messaging functionality  118  or  110  to play out the dropped-off participant&#39;s message to the other participants. 
     The term “call” as used herein is intended to be construed broadly so as to encompass traditional telephony, internet telephony communications, VoIP communications, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) communications, multimedia communications, or other types of network traffic in a network-based communication system. 
     Of course, various changes and modifications to the illustrative embodiments described above will be apparent to those skilled in the art. For example, any user of a real-time may be permitted to leave a message at any time, even when the user is not kept waiting. This may be desirable due to the fact that one party does not think that the other party is listening to him/her or just does not feel like continuing the conversation and just wants to leave a message for the other party and drop off. Or, a party may wish to leave a message that will be played when there&#39;s a pause in the conference call conversation, but the party intends to return to the call. For example, the message might be “My boss is calling, I&#39;ll be back in a minute.” In this case, the party will not drop off, and will merely set the phone down or put the call on hold. If the party rejoins the call when the message has not yet been played, the party will desire to have the message canceled, preferably automatically. The automatic cue to cancel the message might be the party&#39;s taking the call off hold or rejoining the conversation. Such changes and modifications can be made without departing from the spirit and the scope of the invention and without diminishing its attendant advantages. It is therefore intended that such changes and modifications be covered by the following claims except insofar as limited by the prior art.