Patent ID: 7827047

Claim:
A method of assisting scheduling with automation, the method comprising: receiving a verbal scheduling request from a customer at a voice services node; formulating request data to a schedule database, the request data being formulated based on keywords of the verbal scheduling request received from the customer, wherein formulating the request data comprises: accessing a profile for the customer from a profile database to deteintine preferences for the customer, the profile database comprising a profile database storage maintained only at a premises of the customer, the preferences being previously obtained through at least one of the following: previous verbal communication with the customer, data message transaction with the customer, and tracking previous scheduling requests made by the customer, and including the preferences in the request data, when information contained in the preferences is omitted in the request data, to determine whether the request is compatible with a current schedule, wherein including the preferences comprises: accessing the profile for the customer from the profile database, searching for the preferences containing the information omitted in the request data, and updating the request data to include the preferences containing the information omitted in the request data, wherein updating the request data to include the preferences containing the information omitted in the request data does not require further customer interaction; receiving a scheduling update signal from a schedule owner, the scheduling update signal providing an indication of availability for the current schedule stored in the schedule database, the indication of availability including a quantitative capacity; formulating a command to the schedule database based on the received scheduling update signal to update the current schedule; comparing the request data to the current schedule of the schedule database to determine whether the request data is compatible with the current schedule of the schedule database, wherein the update to the current schedule is considered when determining whether the request is compatible; when the request is compatible with the current schedule, altering the current schedule of the schedule database based on the request data; and generating a notification signal of the alteration to the current schedule.