Patent ID: 7260190

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for handling voice mail messages, said method comprising: receiving, at a voicemail manager system, a message retrieval request from a user, the message retrieval request corresponding to a voice mail message generated by a caller; retrieving, by the voicemail manager system, the voice mail message in response to the receiving; playing at least a portion of the voice mail message to the user; playing a description data flag identifier to the user, wherein the description data flag identifier describes an indexing option to associate to the voicemail message; receiving, at the voicemail manager system, metadata generated by the user corresponding to the voice mail message wherein the metadata includes an audible introduction and a description data flag, the audible introduction generated by the user regarding the corresponding voice mail message and the description data flag corresponding to the description data flag identifier and used to index the voicemail message; associating, by the voicemail manager system, the metadata with the voice mail message; and storing, by the voicemail manager system, the associated metadata in a non-volatile storage area.