Patent ID: 8352296

Claim:
A method to be executed at least in part in a computing device for managing real time meeting room status, comprising: receiving, by a computer, in-room presence information for a meeting room, wherein the in-room presence information is received from a presence detector in response to an expiration of a predefined period; retrieving, by the computer, room scheduling information for the meeting room; continuously determining, by the computer, a real time status of the meeting room based on comparison of the in-room presence information and the room scheduling information, wherein a plurality of different status indicators are used to provide the real time status of the meeting room, the plurality of different status indicators comprising: free, occupied but not scheduled, reserved but not occupied, scheduled and occupied; and publishing, by the computer, the real time status of the meeting room to at least one remote client, wherein publishing the real time meeting room status to the at least one remote client comprises: transmitting the real time meeting room status in association with a meeting room alias to a client scheduling application over a network, wherein the meeting room alias is similar to a subscriber of the client scheduling application; finding, in a user interface, the meeting room alias; resolving, in the user interface, the meeting room alias; identifying, in a user interface header, the resolved meeting room alias as the meeting room and as one of a list of aliases; and providing the real time meeting room status in response to receiving a selection of the identified resolved meeting room alias, wherein the real time meeting room status is pushed to the at least one remote client and, upon entry of the meeting room alias in the user interface by the subscriber, the real time meeting room status is displayed next to the meeting room alias in the user interface, wherein providing the real time meeting room status in response to receiving a selection of the identified resolved meeting room alias comprises: hovering over the identified resolved meting room alias in the user interface in response to a user input; and in response to hovering over the meeting room alias, displaying the real time meeting room status in a pop-up box in the user interface, the pop-up box being displayed overlaying a list of subscriptions displayed in the user interface, the list of subscriptions comprising a plurality of meeting room aliases subscribed to by a user of an application for generating the user interface.