Urgency of call indication to called party through distinctive notification
AssigneeNortel Networks Limited
InventorsPieter Groen, Robert A. Williamson, Anne Grosman
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An indication of urgency of a call is received from a caller. The urgency indication is communicated to the called party through a distinctive notification, such as distinctive ringing. The urgency indication may be obtained from a caller via a personal agent.
Claims10
A method of call handling, comprising:
- receiving an indication of urgency of a call for a subscriber, said urgency determined from urgency indicators associated with one or more calling numbers within a profile for said subscriber specifying subscriber-defined special handling for calls from said calling numbers relating to destination numbers associated with said subscriber;
- and
- responsive to said indication, where a station corresponding to an active destination number for said subscriber is on hook, sending signals for generating a distinctive notification indicative of said urgency.
A method of call handling, comprising:
- receiving from a calling station a calling number for a call to a called number;
- determining, based on the calling number, an urgency for the call from a set of calling numbers and associated urgency indicator, said urgency indicators either specified by a subscriber or, for at least one of the urgency indicators, automatically and at least temporarily set based on an urgency specified by said subscriber for a previous call to the respective calling number;
- and
- sending signals to said called station for generating a distinctive ring indicative of the urgency.
A service node comprising:
- means for receiving an indication of urgency of a call for a subscriber, said urgency determined from urgency indicators associated with one or more calling numbers within a profile for said subscriber specifying subscriber-defined special handling for calls from said calling numbers to destination numbers associated with said subscriber;
- and
- means for, responsive to said indication, where a station corresponding to an active destination number for said subscriber is on hook, sending signals for generating a distinctive notification indicative of said urgency.
A computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave comprising:
- an urgency level indicator from a set of urgency level indicators each having a corresponding distinctive notification, said urgency level indicator selected for a call to a subscriber based on a subscriber-defined profile for said subscriber specifying special handling for calls relating to destination numbers associated with said subscriber.
A database storing a set of urgency level indicators for calls from any of a plurality of calling numbers, said urgency level indicators either specified by a subscriber or, for at least one of the plurality of urgency level indicators, automatically and at least temporarily set based on an urgency specified by said subscriber for a previous call to the respective calling number, wherein each urgency level indicator corresponds to a unique distinctive ringing pattern.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.