Patent ID: 8848890

Claim:
A method for routing an incoming call comprising: receiving, at a network routing device, an incoming call addressed to a single phone number, the single phone number associated with a plurality of users; determining, by the network routing device, an incoming caller identifier associated with the incoming call; determining, by the network routing device, whether the incoming caller identifier matches at least one caller identifier in a caller list associated with at least one user of the plurality of users, wherein the network routing device is configured to enable each of the plurality of users to create multiple caller lists, wherein the network routing device is configured to further enable a different routing policy to be assigned to each of the multiple caller lists of a user; if the incoming caller identifier matches a caller identifier in the caller list associated with at least one user of the plurality of users: routing, by the network routing device, the incoming call to at least one telephone associated with the at least one user of the plurality of users based upon a call routing policy associated with the caller list, wherein the call routing policy includes a time-of-day routing policy for the at least one user; if the incoming caller identifier does not match a caller identifier in a caller list associated with any of the plurality of users: prompting a caller associated with the incoming call to choose an intended user of the plurality of users; and routing the incoming call to at least one telephone associated with the intended user; and if the incoming caller identifier matches at least one caller identifier in multiple caller lists associated with multiple users of the plurality of users: prompting a caller associated with the incoming call to choose at least one matching user of the multiple users; and routing the incoming call to at least one telephone associated with the at least one matching user.