Patent Document ID: 9558473
Application ID: 11295082

Base Claim:
1. A method of managing a set of collaborative contacts, the method comprising: obtaining identifying text; obtaining a set of candidate contacts from the set of collaborative contacts using the identifying text, each candidate contact including a set of collaboration capabilities, each collaboration capability corresponding to an ability of each candidate contact to be contacted using a unique collaboration tool, wherein using the identifying text seeks a match for a name of each candidate contact and a contact information for each collaboration capability of each candidate contact; requesting an availability status for each collaboration capability of each candidate contact, wherein the requesting sends a request to each candidate contact's collaboration tool corresponding to the unique collaboration tool, and wherein the requesting receives the availability status from each candidate contact's collaboration tool; ranking the set of candidate contacts based upon the set of collaboration capabilities of each candidate contact; and generating a display that includes the ranked set of candidate contacts and each candidate contact's set of collaboration capabilities, an icon corresponding to a most preferred collaboration capability, and the availability status for each collaboration capability.

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Claim 8:
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the ranking identifies a most preferred and available collaboration capability for each candidate contact.