Patent ID: 8103725

Claim:
A method in a computer system of a recipient for determining whether to reroute an incoming communication sent to the recipient to a delegate, the method comprising: publishing to a presence server presence information of the recipient, the presence information indicating that the recipient is online via a delegate when the recipient is currently offline but at least one delegate of the recipient is online; and when the published presence information indicates that the recipient is online via a delegate, receiving at the computer system of the recipient an incoming communication sent by a sender intended for receipt by the recipient; accessing presence information associated with the recipient; determining whether the incoming communication should be rerouted to a delegate based, at least in part, on the presence information; if the incoming communication should be rerouted to a delegate, identifying a delegate to which the communication should be rerouted; and sending the incoming communication from the computer system of the recipient to a computer system of the identified delegate to effect rerouting of the incoming communication.