Patent ID: 7330895

Claim:
A system to facilitate communications between parties, comprising: a user interface that is configurable by a contactor and/or a contactee; and a data store adapted to receive N parameters from the user interface, N being an integer, the N parameters relating to a communications preference, context and/or policy, the N parameters to guide decisions that facilitate optimal communications between parties, the data store further comprising a formula to guide the decisions, the formula including the following equation: A * = arg ⁢ ⁢ max j ⁢ u ⁡ ( A J , A k C , C , context R , context C ) where A* is the ideal, selected communication modality for the communication; A j represents each of all communication modalities being considered; A C k is the initial communication modality employed by the contactor; C refers to an identity or group membership of the contactor; context R is the known or assumed context of the contactee; context C is the known or assumed context of the contactor; and u() represents a utility function to operate on the arguments that provides an encoding of preferences about communications for the recipient or another entity whose preferences are being used to guide the handling of the communications in order to determine optimal communication actions that maximize the utility of communications between the contactor and the contactee.