Patent ID: 7676033

Claim:
Method for automatically establishing a conference call having a plurality of different subscriber participation classes, the method comprising: (a) maintaining at least one per conference call subscriber participation class list indicating subscriber contact information for a conference call and indicating a plurality of different subscriber participation classes for the conference call; and (b) establishing the conference call having the different subscriber participation classes in accordance with the at least one per conference call subscriber participation class list; wherein maintaining at least one per conference call subscriber participation class list includes maintaining a required list listing subscribers who are mandatory participants in the conference call and a notify list listing subscribers who receive notification of a state of the conference call and participants in the conference call so that the subscribers in the notify list can decide whether to join the conference call, and wherein establishing the conference call includes alerting subscribers in the required list who have not joined the conference call to join the conference call and automatically adding each subscriber in the required list to the conference call in response to receiving a predetermined indication from each subscriber in the required list and allowing subscribers in the notify list who received the notification to join the conference call.