Patent ID: 7472181

Claim:
A computerized appointment setting system for assigning a service order to a network resource, comprising: an appointment negotiator operative to receive a service order from a customer, the service order comprising a requested appointment time; and deliver an appointment confirmation or an appointment rejection to the customer; a dispatch database comprising a technician and an appointments table, the dispatch database operative to maintain a dispatch database record of appointments previously assigned to a network resource; and an appointment control system operative to receive the service order from the appointment negotiator; receive updated availability and capacity information associated with the network resource; determine whether the network resource can fulfill the service order based on the updated availability and capacity information; assign a requested appointment associated with the service order to the network resource and send an appointment confirmation to the appointment negotiator, in response to a determination that the network resource can fulfill the service order; continuously update the dispatch database to determine whether a change has occurred to the dispatch database record associated with the network resource; determine whether the change affects the appointment associated with the service order, in response to a determination that a change to the dispatch database record associated with the network resource has occurred; determine whether another network resource from the technician table is qualified to fulfill the service order and is available at the requested appointment time, in response to a determination that the change affects the appointment associated with the service order; if another qualified network resource is available to fulfill the service order at the requested appointment time, automatically reassign the appointment to the other qualified network resource without requiring the involvement of the appointment negotiator; notify the appointment negotiator to reschedule the service order, in response to a determination that no other qualified network resource is available to fulfill the service order at the requested appointment time, wherein the appointment negotiator contacts the customer to reschedule the service order at an alternative appointment time; and automatically reassign the requested appointment associated with the service order to another network resource in order to fulfill the requested appointment at the alternative appointment time, in response to notifying the appointment negotiator to reschedule the service order and the appointment negotiator contacting the customer.