Patent ID: 8804573

Claim:
A method of determining presence of a principal on one or more devices or communication channels, the method comprising: determining a presence attribute of the principal at a presence server based at least in part on past presence information for the principal; storing the determined presence attribute of the principal by the presence server as a past presence attribute of a plurality of past presence attributes, each of the plurality of past presence attributes indicating a past presence of the principal; determining with the presence server a relevance of each the stored past presence attributes; storing the determined relevance as a relevance attribute of each stored past presence attribute; receiving at the presence server a request for a presence of the principal after determining the presence attribute of the principal, storing the past presence attribute of the principal, and determining the relevance of each the stored past presence attributes; retrieving by the presence server the stored past presence attributes and the stored relevance attributes for the principal; determining by the presence server a current presence of the principal in real time in response to the request, wherein the stored past present attributes indicate presence of the principal at a time prior to a time of the current presence; determining by the presence server an order for the retrieved past presence attributes based on the relevance attribute of each retrieved past presence attribute; and providing in response to the request for the presence of the principal the current presence of the principal, two or more of the retrieved past presence attributes indicating the past presence of the principal, and the retrieved relevance attributes of each of the stored presence attributes from the presence server, wherein the two or more of the retrieved past presence attributes are presented in the determined order.