Patent ID: 7571249

Claim:
A communications system for routing communication sessions based on presence and preference information, comprising: a presence server capable of collecting presence information and preference information on a plurality of presentities, wherein said presence information for each of said plurality of presentities includes availability of devices associated therewith and said preference information for each of said plurality of presentities includes a priority level for one or more initiators and preference indications for each media type supported by each of said devices associated therewith; and a communications manager connected to receive a request for a communication session with a presentity from an initiator, said request including an initiator identification and a select media type for said communication session; wherein said preference indications for each said media type include a respective overall q-value for each said media type computed from respective q-values for each of said media types supported on each of said devices associated with said presentity and respective q-values for each of said media types supported by each application running on each of said devices associated with said presentity; wherein said communications manager is operable to extract said presence information and said preference information of said presentity from said presence server, identify a list of said devices of said presentity that support said select media type and are accessible to said initiator based on said priority level granted to said initiator in said preference information, filter said list using said presence information of said select presentity to identify available devices, determine a preference value for each of said available devices based on said preference indications and select a select available device from said available devices having a highest preference value for said communication session.