Message transmission using an IVR system
AssigneeZhuangzi Li and Associates
InventorZhuangzi Li
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A software app for a smartphone recognizes input from the user (such as the initial digits of a phone number) that identifies the organization to be called, and accesses remotely stored representations of information about the organization along with the IVR phone tree information for that organization. The app then presents a graphical representation of all or part of the retrieved information on a display. The user can then respond to the graphical representation by providing selective inputs that cause the synthesis all or part of the dialstring needed to navigate the phone tree to the desired destination. Once a dialing option has been synthesized, the user may provide additional input that the system interprets as an instruction to open a phone call and send a text message using the synthesized number.
Claims16
An electronic smartphone implemented method for creating a telephone dialstring, comprising the steps of:
- accessing, by a computer within the smartphone, an electronic relational database comprising representations of
- telephone numbers and phone tree options, in which
- the phone tree options are associated with the telephone numbers represented in the relational database;
- accepting input to select at least one of the represented telephone numbers;
- displaying on a display device of the smartphone a set of phone tree options associated with the selected telephone number;
- accepting input to select at least one of the set of phone tree options;
- appending, by a computer within the smartphone, a bitstring associated with the selected phone tree option
- to a string comprising bits representing the selected telephone number
- to create a modified dialstring;
- and
- appending, by a computer within the smartphone, a user-designated textstring to the modified dialstring.
A non-transitory computer readable medium for use in an electronic data processing system within an electronic smartphone, the non-transitory computer readable medium having encoded upon it instructions executable by the data processing system to perform process steps comprising:
- accessing, by a computer within the smartphone, an electronic relational database comprising representations of
- telephone numbers and phone tree options, in which
- the phone tree options are associated with the telephone numbers represented in the relational database;
- accepting input to select at least one of the represented telephone numbers;
- displaying on a display device of the smartphone a set of phone tree options associated with the selected telephone number;
- accepting input to select at least one of the set of phone tree options;
- appending, by a computer within the smartphone, a bitstring associated with the selected phone tree option
- to a string comprising bits representing the selected telephone number
- to create a modified dialstring;
- and
- appending, by a computer within the smartphone, a user-designated textstring to the modified dialstring.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.