Virtual area communications
AssigneeSococo, Inc.
InventorsPaul J. Brody, David Van Wie, Joseph Jennings, Joshua M. Greenbaum
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A virtual area has a spatial visualization and includes zones that are associated with respective geometric boundaries located in relation to the spatial visualization. Realtime data stream connections between sources and sinks of network nodes in the zones of the virtual area are administered to provide a wide variety of virtual area applications, including virtual area applications that implement spatial rules for one or more synchronous conferencing services (e.g., instant messaging, such as text chat, audio conferencing, video conferencing, application sharing, and file sharing).
Claims20
A method performed by one or more processors executing one or more program instructions encoded in one or more non-transitory structures, the method comprising:
- establishing a respective presence in a virtual area for each of one or more communicants, wherein copresent communicants are able to interact with one another in a context defined by a spatial visualization of the virtual area using respective network nodes;
- in the spatial visualization of the virtual area, providing tools for communicants who are present in the virtual area to perform a predefined set of tasks associated with a business process according to a set of predefined rules;
- modifying one or more attributes of the virtual area based on changes in the business process;
- monitoring data relating to the tasks performed for an instance of the business process and relating to communicant interactions in the virtual area;
- and
- based on the monitored data, generating one or more metrics for evaluating performance of the one or more instances of the business process.
A system, comprising:
- a virtual area platform comprising one or more processors executing one or more program instructions encoded in one or more non-transitory structures to administer a virtual area and perform operations comprising:
- establishing a respective presence in the virtual area for each of one or more communicants, wherein copresent communicants are able to interact with one another in a context defined by a spatial visualization of the virtual area using respective network nodes,
- in the spatial visualization of the virtual area, providing tools for communicants who are present in the virtual area to perform a predetermined set of tasks associated with a business process according to a set of predefined rules, and
- modifying one or more attributes of the virtual area based on changes in the business process;
- and
- a business process platform interfaced with the virtual area platform, and comprising one or more processors executing one or more program instructions encoded in one or more non-transitory structures to administer the business process and perform operations comprising:
- monitoring data relating to the tasks performed for an instance of the business process and relating to communicant interactions in the virtual area;
- and
- based on the monitored data, generating one or more metrics for evaluating performance of the one or more instances of the business process.
At least one non-transitory computer storage medium encoded with a computer program product comprising instructions that, when executed by one or more systems comprising one or more computers, cause the one or more systems to perform operations comprising:
- establishing a respective presence in a virtual area for each of one or more communicants, wherein copresent communicants are able to interact with one another in a context defined by a spatial visualization of the virtual area using respective network nodes;
- in the spatial visualization of the virtual area, providing tools for communicants who are present in the virtual area to perform a predetermined set of tasks associated with a business process according to a set of predefined rules;
- modifying one or more attributes of the virtual area based on changes in the business process;
- monitoring data relating to the tasks performed for an instance of the business process and relating to communicant interactions in the virtual area;
- and
- based on the monitored data, generating one or more metrics for evaluating performance of the one or more instances of the business process.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.