Abstract:
The disclosed invention provides system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls. The invention provides a method of automatically routing incoming telephone calls to either internal phone call processing resources or to destination parties (system users) as defined by the individual destination parties. Dynamic extensions are assigned by a system user on demand from a pool of unassigned extensions, which are generated by an autoattendant telephone call routing system. As a dynamic extension is assigned to a particular caller, identification attributes are input into the system, which may include calling party identification information supplied by the source carrier of the calling party. The system then tags the assigned extension with the identifying information. Such tags are subsequently used by the system to classify the caller when the caller accesses internal call processing resources. The tags may also be provided to the destination party via an asynchronous notification means on the destination party&#39;s associated computer terminal or networked personal computer (PC). This allows the destination party to identify a caller and instruct the telephone routing system to further control the routing of a telephone call in real time.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     This invention relates generally to a system and method for automatically routing incoming telephone calls. More specifically, this invention relates to a new system and method which can route incoming telephone calls to either internal telephone call processing resources as defined by a destination party. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     While most individuals in our society would be unable to function without the ability to communicate with remote individuals using the telephone, there are times when incoming telephone calls are an unwelcome annoyance. However, even when an individual does not want to be interrupted by annoyance telephone calls, such an individual would still welcome incoming calls of an emergency nature or those providing important information. In these cases, the telephone must be answered. In the past, many businesses have utilized receptionists and/or secretaries to screen incoming telephone calls. However, with the ever increased cost of personnel services, companies are viewing such human interaction as a luxury that is difficult to justify. As such, many businesses have incorporated automated telephone attendant systems (&#34;autoattendants&#34;) into their business telephony systems. However, many of these systems lack the flexibility to screen incoming telephone calls and either direct all calls to a system user&#39;s fixed physical telephone extension or to a electronic answering or &#34;voice-mail system.&#34; 
     The shortcomings of these inflexible systems, has led to a significant amount of innovation in the telephony arts. In fact, many telephony systems have been developed that allow a user to screen incoming telephone calls by assigning various access codes or the like to specific individuals. An example of such a system is U.S. Pat. No. 4,845,743. In this system, an automated answering device answers all incoming telephone calls. The system then allows a caller to input a series of tone frequencies which are decoded by a dual tone multifrequency (DTMF) receiver, after which a comparison is made between the code input by a caller and a code input by the system user. If a match exists, then the system forwards the call to the system user. 
     Other, and somewhat more sophisticated systems, are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,604,854; 4,266,098; 4,817,133; 4,893,335 and others. However, while these systems all require an input from a caller in order to provide the necessary identification information, they do not provide the flexibility and inherent advantages of the disclosed invention, which includes real time interaction by a system user in order to instruct the call routing system. 
     Additional prior art systems incorporate devices and methods that accept information provided by the telephone signal of an incoming telephone call. Examples of these types of systems are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,277,649 and 4,924,496. However, these systems can only recognize a station (phone) from which a phone call originates. In many business or private situations, these &#34;caller-ID&#34; systems provide no benefit in identifying callers since multiple individuals may share the same station, such as a large company having a limited amount of physical phone lines accessing hundreds of employees through a private branch exchange (PBX) telephone network. Even in home scenarios, multiple persons use a single telephone line. Thus, positive caller identification cannot be guaranteed. 
     Accordingly, a new and improved system and method for caller identification and subsequent call routing is needed. 
     OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION 
     It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a new system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls, which allows destination parties to assign multiple extension numbers in addition to their fixed PBX extension to direct calls to themselves. 
     Another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls where tags assigned to the numbers can be used to identify a caller prior to the call being placed to the destination party&#39;s fixed PBX extension. 
     Yet another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls, which gives a destination party the flexibility to reroute an incoming call to other telephony resources, such as a voice messaging system, without indicating to the caller that such intervention has occurred. 
     Still another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls, which offers personalized greeting recordings if the system automatically, or through destination party intervention, routes an incoming call into an on-hold state prior to allowing the incoming call to be connected to the destination party&#39;s fixed PBX extension. 
     A further object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls that allow a destination party to define routes though the telephone system by means of a dynamically assigned extension number to direct incoming callers to any one of a number of available telephony resources. 
     An even further object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls that allows the destination party to define extension numbers whose validity is defined for a fixed period of time. 
     Still another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls that allows a destination party to configure and maintain his or her set of dynamically assigned extensions by means of a call routing command module, comprising a graphical interfaced computer application that communicates with and sends routing commands to a telephone call routing logic subsystem. 
     Yet another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls, which can instruct the telephone call routing system when connecting an incoming caller and a destination party to maintain a switching system conference and, under destination party control, record, play-back and deliver to the destination party&#39;s voice mailbox all or part of a conversation. 
     An additional object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls that can be instructed, via a user-configured &#34;pop-up&#34; dialog box, to automatically instruct the routing system to direct all calls to a telephone messaging system. 
     A further object of the invention is to provide a system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls that can attach the called party tag information to any voice messages that the caller leaves allowing selection methods to be used to subsequently access voice messages. 
     These and still other objects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     A new system and method for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls is disclosed, which provides a method of automatically routing incoming telephone calls to either internal phone call processing resources or to destination parties (system users) as defined by the individual destination parties. Dynamic extensions are assigned by a system user on demand from a pool of unassigned extensions, which are generated by an autoattendant telephone call routing system. As a dynamic extension is assigned to a particular caller, identification attributes are input into the system. The identification attributes may include a particular caller&#39;s name, address, telephone number or other personal information. They may also include calling party identification (&#34;caller-ID&#34;) information supplied by the source carrier of the calling party. The system then tags the assigned extension with the identifying information. Such tags are subsequently used by the system to classify the caller when the caller accesses internal call processing resources. The tags may also be provided to the destination party via an asynchronous notification dialog box on the destination party&#39;s associated computer terminal or networked personal computer (PC). This allows the destination party to identify an incoming caller and instruct the telephone routing system to further control the routing of a telephone call in real time. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
     FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of the system for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls. 
     FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing the steps perfomed by the disclosed system for real-time screening and routing of incoming telephone calls when an incoming telephone call is received. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
     The disclosed system and method can be used as both a means of caller identification independent of any available identification and as a method of routing incoming telephone calls, which have been identified, to specific telephony services or fixed, physical destination party PBX extensions. All of the foregoing is accomplished under the dynamic control of the users of the system. It is an adjunct to a classical voice mail--automated attendant (&#34;autoattendant&#34;) system. 
     Turning now to FIG. 1, the major components of the overall system are shown in a block diagram format. A calling party 100 initiates a telephone call to a desired destination party, which is routed to the call screening and routing system 101 via a public access telephone network 102. The system 101 comprises a telephony switching apparatus 103, which directs all incoming telephone calls to a conventional autoattendant 104. Once an incoming call is &#34;answered&#34; by the autoattendant 104, the autoattendant directs the incoming caller to enter the desired extension number of the party the calling party wishes to reach. This extension number and the control of the call is then transferred by the autoattendant 104 to a dynamic extension system 110. Furthermore, the autoattendant 104 screens the incoming call to determine if the call contains any identifying information, such as carrier calling party identification, which is conventional data provided by many telecommunication providers to identify the telephone number of a station from which a call is initiated. If any such information is present, then the autoattendant 104 attaches this information to the incoming call as a caller identification tag prior to routing the incoming call to the dynamic extension system 110. Caller identification tags indicate identifying data which can be used to uniquely identify an incoming caller. In addition to caller-ID information, examples of caller identification tags include a caller&#39;s name, address, telephone number, date of birth or any other unique identifying information. 
     The dynamic extension system 110 comprises a routing logic subsystem 111, a locally-coded fixed extension look-up table, 112, a user-maintained dynamic extension look-up table 113 and a destination party call routing command module 114, which is accessed via a destination party&#39;s computer terminal or PC 117. The fixed extension look-up table contains a listing of the fixed, physical extension numbers assigned to the telephone handsets (or headsets as the case may be) used by the various destination parties in a particular PBX phone system. Fixed, physical extension numbers are a function of the PBX phone system and comprise the hardwired link between an incoming call and a specific destination party. The dynamic extension look-up table contains a listing of dynamically-assigned &#34;virtual&#34; extension numbers. For example, a destination party may assign a dynamic extension to a specific supplier, customer, salesperson, etc. In this way, any of these people place an incoming call to the same destination party, each will enter a different, pre-assigned dynamic extension number. While they will all seek to call the same destination party, the use of different dynamic extension numbers will allow the system to identify the different incoming callers. 
     The dynamic extension look-up table will change from time to time as dynamic extensions are assigned, terminated or expire. A dynamic extension may be permanently assigned to a specific calling party, such as a destination party&#39;s spouse or may be assigned for a limited period of time. An example of a limited-time dynamic extension would be when a destination party leaves a message to have a specific calling party return his or her call that day. The destination party could then pre-set the dynamic extension to expire at midnight. A destination party may also program a specific dynamic extension to expire upon the receipt of an incoming call to the specified dynamic extension. In this way, the dynamic extension system 110 will not contain numerous dynamic extensions that are no longer needed. 
     When a calling party enters a desired extension number, as directed by the autoattendant 104, the dynamic extension system 110 compares the desired extension number with a list of fixed extension numbers that are resident in the locally-coded fixed extension look-up table 112 to determine whether the calling party has indicated a desire to be directed to a particular destination party&#39;s physical PBX telephone extension. If the desired extension number entered by the incoming caller matches a physical extension number in the fixed extension look-up table 112, then the telephone call may be tagged with attributes that describe the calling party as &#34;unknown.&#34; Once an incoming call is tagged as &#34;unknown&#34;, the system routes the call to the desired destination party&#39;s call routing command module 114 and routes the call in accordance with instructions provided by the destination party for &#34;unknown&#34; calls. For example, all &#34;unknown&#34; calls may be routed directly to a voice messaging system. 
     On the other hand, if a comparison of the desired extension with the fixed extension look-up table 112 does not result in a match, then the dynamic extension system 110 accesses the user-maintained dynamic extension look-up table 113 to determine if the desired extension number matches a dynamically created extension number in the dynamic extension look-up table 113. If such a match is found, then the system 101 attaches the identification and routing action tags assigned to the extension number by the specific system user to the incoming call and routes the incoming call in accordance with the user defined routing action tags. As indicated earlier, identification tags provide information to identify a specific incoming caller. Routing action tags, on the other hand, instruct the system 101 how to handle a specific incoming call. For example, routing action tags may instruct to system to route an incoming call to a voice messaging system. They may also instruct the system 101 to route an incoming call to a fixed physical PBX extension, route a call to a conferencing system or route the call to any other auxiliary telephony resource through the auxiliary telephony resource interface 116. If no match exists in the dynamic extension table 113, then the dynamic extension system 110 returns the calling party to the autoattendant 104 as an invalid call attempt. The autoattendant 104 would then advise the incoming caller that the desired extension number is not valid and would instruct the incoming caller to enter an additional desired extension number. The system 101 would then repeat the call identification and routing process. 
     The dynamic extension system 110 may attach any one of a number of routing action tags to an incoming call. In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the routing action tags allow an incoming call to be directed to a destination party&#39;s fixed physical PBX telephone extension 115 or to any number of other auxiliary telephony resources, such as a voice messaging or &#34;voice mail&#34; system, via auxiliary telephony resource interface 116. 
     If the routing action tag indicates that an incoming call is to be directed to a destination party, then the dynamic extension system 110 sends an incoming call signal to the destination party&#39;s computer terminal or PC 117 by means of an asychronous communications means or network connection to the call routing command module 114, running on the destination party&#39;s associated computer terminal or PC 117. 
     On the other hand, the routing action tags can specify, by way of example, that the call routing command module return the incoming call to the routing logic subsystem 111 with instructions to place the incoming call into the voice messaging system via the auxiliary telephony resource interface 116 without any destination party notification or interaction. Otherwise, the telephony application will generate and display a call indication message in an information dialog box on the destination party&#39;s call routing command module at his or her local computer terminal or PC. The information dialog box will inform the destination party that an incoming call is present and will display the assigned caller identification tags as a key component of the call indication message. An audio signal may also be triggered by the display of the information dialog box in order to advise a destination party that an incoming call is present in the event that the destination party is not looking at the computer screen when the dialog box is first displayed. 
     The destination party can route an incoming call in a number of ways once apprised that an incoming call is being presented for consideration. These user-directed options are selected by entering one of a number user-defined commands into the call routing command module 114 via the user&#39;s input device, such as a keyboard, mouse or the like. For example, the destination party may command the system 101 to send the incoming call into the voice mail system. The destination party may also place a caller on hold, in which case the caller may be addressed by a pre-recorded message that the destination party has created for the purpose of individualizing an information message to the caller. For example, an individualized message could state, &#34;Hi John, I&#39;m currently on another call. However, I really need to speak with you. I will be right with you so, please hold on.&#34; 
     If the destination party takes no action, then the telephony application will default to a user-defined default action. This default action may either direct the system 101 to put the incoming call into the voice mail system or transfer the caller to the destination party&#39;s fixed extension 115. The destination party can take an incoming call off &#34;hold&#34; by either routing the caller to the voice mail system or by directing the system to connect the incoming call to the destination party&#39;s fixed extension 115. Additional incoming calls are processed by the system 101 in a like manner, thus allowing the destination party to make decisions as to which incoming calls to handle first. 
     Whenever the call routing command module is configured by a destination party to connect an incoming call to his or her fixed extension 115, the application will check the user-defined options to determine whether or not the destination party has instructed the system 101 to maintain an active audio path to the connection for conferencing or the like. The active audio path will allow a specific conversation to be recorded by a destination party in its entirety. This is accomplished using the recording capabilities of the voice messaging system via the auxiliary telephony resource interface 116. The conferencing function also allows for conference calls between a plurality of incoming callers and destination parties in conduction with the features of the fixed PBX telephone system. If conferencing is not desired, then the system 101 has completed its control of the incoming call at the time it is connected to a destination party&#39;s fixed extension 115. 
     On the other hand, if the system 101 is in a conference mode, then an additional dialog box will be presented to the destination party on the destination party&#39;s computer terminal or PC 117. In addition to allowing a destination party to record a call in its entirety, this conferencing dialog will allow the destination party to playback a particular message or conversation. At any point, a destination party may choose to send a recording into the voice messaging system, at which time the routing system 111 completes its control of an incoming call. 
     If at any time a routing action tag instructs the system 101 to transfer an incoming call to another telephony resource, then the system 101 will pass any attached identification tags and the control of the incoming call to the transferee&#39;s local call routing command module. 
     Various additional changes coming within the spirit of the invention may suggest themselves to those skilled in the art; hence the invention is not limited to the specific embodiment shown or described, but the same is intended to be merely exemplary. It should be understood that numerous other modifications and embodiments can be devised by those skilled in the art that will fall within the spirit and scope of the principles of the invention.