Patent ID: 7039168

Claim:
A method for managing announcement data comprising: collecting switch data, the switch data describing one or more characteristics of one or more switches of a network; extracting announcement data from the switch data, the announcement data describing one or more characteristics of the switch that relate to the provisioning of announcements from the switch; storing the announcement data in a database; and providing one or more users with access to the database through a computer network to display the announcement data for the one or more users; wherein at least one of the one or more switches is an incorporated switch of a central office of a telecommunications network and the announcements provisioned from the switch are recorded announcements that are audible, and wherein collecting the switch data for the incorporated switch comprises downloading the switch data from the incorporated switch; wherein the switch data comprises translation tables, and wherein extracting the recorded announcement data from the switch data comprises extracting fields of the translation tables that are associated with recorded announcements; wherein storing the recorded announcement data in a database comprises recording the extracted fields in the database; wherein storing the recorded announcement data in a database further comprises: before recording the extracted fields, preserving recorded announcement data about the incorporated switch that was previously stored in the database; and after recording the extracted fields, comparing the preserved recorded announcement data to the extracted fields, identifying portions of the preserved recorded announcement data that do not appear in the extracted fields, and entering the portions into the database.