Patent ID: 7536001

Claim:
A method of generating a user availability information to a subscriber from a plurality of availability rules with fuzzy indictors of degrees of a user availability set by a user, comprising: receiving a request from said subscriber for said user availability information resulting in one or more firing responses of predetermined ones of said availability rules, said responses are of the form: unique identifier for rule, fuzzy value of availability, and a list of factors that were considered by the rules, and said factors include: time, location, and relationship between said subscriber and said user; creating a factor table for each of said responses including a specificity value for each of the factors considered by said rules and the fuzzy value of availability for each rule; calculating a composite fuzzy value of user availability from said values in said factor table, said calculating includes one of either; selecting a maximum one of said values of availability in said factor table, selecting a minimum one of said values of availability in said factor table, performing an arithmetic average of said values of availability in said factor table, performing a geometric average of said values of availability in said factor table, and performing specificity weighted average of said values of availability in said factor table; computing a crisp indication of user availability by comparing said composite fuzzy value to a threshold availability value and generating one of either a crisp indictor of availability in the event that said composite fuzzy value of user availability exceeds said threshold availability value, or a crisp indicator of unavailability in the event that said composite fuzzy value of user availability is less than said threshold availability value; and transmitting said crisp indication of user availability to said subscriber.