Patent ID: 7672440

Claim:
A single point of contact personal communication system comprising: a subscriber database to store information of at least one subscriber; a device attributes database to store contact information of a plurality of subscriber devices of a subscriber; an authorization database to store authorization information to verify whether a user is authorized to contact the subscriber; a priority list database to store an order for contacting the plurality of subscriber devices; a computer linked to the device attributes database, the subscriber database, the authorization database, and the priority list database; a telephone interface attached to the computer, wherein the telephone interface is operable to communicate with at least one of office phones, facsimile machines, voicemail systems and telephone central office; an Internet interface attached to the computer; and a computer program residing within the computer, wherein the computer program causes a processor of the computer to: responsive to a request received from the user to contact the subscriber via at least one of the telephone interface and the Internet interface, search the subscriber database; responsive to finding a record matching the subscriber in the subscriber database, determine whether the user is authorized to contact the subscriber; responsive to determining that the user is authorized to contact the subscriber, take a first message from the user for the subscriber and request the user to indicate an emergency; responsive to an emergency indication, immediately attempt to contact and to convey the first message to all of the subscriber devices of the subscriber at the same time, and to continue attempting to contact and to convey the first message until a contact with the subscriber is achieved; responsive to a non-emergency indication, attempt to contact and to convey the first message to each subscriber device by sequentially selecting each of the plurality of subscriber devices in the order stored in the priority list database and continue attempting to convey the first message until the contact with the subscriber is achieved; responsive to selecting a subscriber device, finding a corresponding contact information of the subscriber device in the device attributes database, and using at least one of the telephone interface and the Internet interface to contact the subscriber and to convey the first message to the subscriber; responsive to achieving contact with the subscriber, convey the first message to the subscriber and notify the user of a message delivery.