Patent ID: 7516410

Claim:
A method for facilitating collaboration between geographically-dispersed members of a team, comprising: providing a collaboration services suite operative to: maintain information identifying each team member and respective communications devices associated with each team member, the respective communications devices of each team member including at least one communications device operative for communications over a first communications network, and at least one communications device operative for communications over a second communications network; obtain, from at least the first and second communications networks, information indicating an availability of each team member for communication using each of their respective communications devices; and to establish a communications session between two or more members of the team in response to a request from any one of the team members; and providing a team member interface operative to: display on a user terminal, for each team member, a respective indicator corresponding to each of the team member's associated communications devices and the information indicating the availability of each team member for communication using each of their respective communications devices; and enable a team member to request initiation by the collaboration services suite of a communications session with at least one other team member using a selected one of the communications devices associated with the other team member; wherein the first communications network is a data network, and the second communications network is a switched telephone network; wherein the communications session comprises a voice connection between first and second voice communications devices having respective unique extension numbers on an enterprise network connected to a Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) via a private branch exchange (PBX), and the collaboration services suite is operative to convert the communications session into a multi-party voice communications session by: sending a connection request message to the PBX to establish a third-party call connection between the first voice communications device on the enterprise network and a conference bridge; sending a connection request message to a virtual switching point in the PSTN to establish a call connection between an Enhanced Integrated Services Digital Network User Part (E-ISUP) trunk in the PSTN and a third voice communications device associated with the new party; and establishing a call connection between the E-ISUP trunk and the conference bridge to enable voice communications between each of the voice communications devices via the conference bridge.