Voice mail system with subscriber noticeboard facility

Abstract

A voice mail system has a set of mailboxes. A caller can then leave a message in the appropriate mailbox for the voice mail system subscriber that they were trying to contact. Normally when such a caller first reaches a mailbox, they hear a personalised greeting from the subscriber. It is difficult for the subscriber to keep the greeting brief yet informative. The present invention provides the subscriber with an additional noticeboard on which to record further information. A caller can gain access to this noticeboard by pressing an appropriate DTMF key whilst listening to the greeting. More sophisticated systems can have a hierarchy of noticeboards, with the top one providing menu information, and allowing a caller to select the noticeboard of most relevance to them. The subscriber can password-protect individual noticeboards, so that they can only be accessed by properly authorised callers.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.