Patent ID: 7143186

Claim:
A collaboration hub for use with a collaboration system for handling messages of conversations among participants, comprising: a transport for receiving messages from participants and sending messages to other participants using an extensible data protocol, wherein the extensible data protocol allows a participant to specify both a routing information, and a business protocol, for that conversation, wherein the routing information is specified by the participant in a header of the extensible data protocol, and wherein the business protocol is specified by a uniform resource locator used by the participant to communicate with the transport; a decoder that decodes messages received from the participants; a router that validates each message received from a participant at the transport, examines the routing information to determine which others of the participants the message should be delivered to, and stores the message for subsequent delivery via the transport to those participants; a scheduler that schedules the flow of messages from the transport to the router, and from the router to the transport; a manager that manages the flow of messages across components of collaboration hub; a repository that stores management data, wherein said management data is used by components of the collaboration hub to handle said messages; and wherein support for an additional business protocol can be plugged into the collaboration hub, by specifying the uniform resource locator to be used with the additional business protocol, and the decoder that the additional business protocol will use to decode messages.