Patent ID: 7082458

Claim:
A dialog facilitator preserving the spatial and temporal context of a dialog composed of a plurality of postings in an electronic messaging system, the postings being packaged into messages which are sent and received using a messaging system, said dialog facilitator comprising: a services gateway exchanging messages with the messaging system, and using information contained in the messages to populate a dialog posting and a posting summary; said dialog posting containing a posting identifier uniquely identifying the dialog posting, a dialog identifier identifying the dialog to which the dialog posting corresponds, and posting detail information; said posting summary containing addressing information identifying recipients of the corresponding dialog posting, the posting identifier, the dialog identifier, referential information defining the relationship of the posting summary to other posting summaries in the dialog, and content description information; a content store for storing at least one said dialog posting; a dialog store for altering a posting summary of said at least one dialog posting, a journal keeper coupled to said dialog store for examining said referential information to determine whether said posting summary relates to an existing said posting summary in said dialog store, and assigning a unique dialog identifier to said posting summary if it is not related to an existing posting sumary in said dialog store; and a media coordinator using the posting identifier, the dialog identifier, and the referential information to present the spatial and temporal context of a selected dialog posting in relation to other said postings belonging to a given dialog.