Patent ID: 6989820

Claim:
A method of controlling a plurality of terminals in a communication system, the method comprising the step of: utilizing an automated set of operations to generate information representative of at least a first state machine and a second state machine, the first state machine for controlling a first set of labels for soft-labeled keys of a first terminal associated with a first user, and the second state machine for controlling a second set of labels for soft-labeled keys of a second terminal associated with a second user, wherein the automated set of operations process input indicative of terminal features desired by each of said first user and said second user in order to generate the respective first and second state machines, the first and second state machines producing different soft-labeled key displays for the respective first and second terminals; wherein the information includes a control table specifying a set of label identifiers for each of at least a subset of the plurality of states of at least one of the first and second terminals, and a label table specifying, for each of at least a subset of the labels identified by a given one of the label identifiers, a character string corresponding to the label, a feature identifier associated with the label, and a presentation attribute.