Patent ID: 7493369

Claim:
A system comprising computer-executable components stored on a computer-readable medium that, when executed on one or more processors, facilitates determining a user's presence and availability, comprising: a monitor component that assesses a user's pattern of availability by sampling the user's context at random time intervals and recording data relating to the user's present context and state of activity, the recorded data used to refine a predictive model that infers the user's future pattern of availability; a learning component that is trained according to the user's pattern of availability to infer an expected time until the user will be available to receive a communication via a particular device, channel, or location; and an interface component that interacts with the learning component to provide current and predictive presence information for the user with respect to the device, the channel or the location, the interface component configured to gather data and generate inferences about the availability of different communication channels, provide presence information with respect to different locations, or provide overall availability associated with a current cost of interruption, the gathered data including at least an elapsed time that a software application has been in use by a user.