Selecting a message greeting for an unavailable party based upon contextual data associated with a contacting party

A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereupon that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform operations comprising:

• receiving a notification that a party is unavailable in response to a communication initiated by a contacting party;
• in response to receiving the notification, acquiring contextual data associated with the contacting party;
• determining an appropriate message greeting for the contacting party based upon the contextual data, the appropriate message greeting being a message greeting that is usable by the contacting party given a context in which the contacting party is involved as identified by the contextual data;
• determining that the appropriate message greeting currently does not exist for the contacting party;
• adapting a message greeting from a first format that is inappropriate for the context in which the contacting party is involved to a second format that is appropriate for the context in which the contacting party is involved so as to create the appropriate message greeting;
• and
• sending the appropriate message greeting for the contacting party to a contacting party device associated with the contacting party, the appropriate message greeting notifying the contacting party that the party is unavailable.

A message greeting system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory having processor-executable instructions stored thereupon that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising
• receiving a notification that a party is unavailable in response to a communication initiated by a contacting party,
• querying a presence system for presence data associated with the contacting party,
• receiving the presence data associated with the contacting party from the presence system,
• determining an appropriate message greeting for the contacting party based upon the presence data,
• determining if the appropriate message greeting is stored in a message store,
• if the appropriate message greeting is stored in the message store, acquiring the appropriate message greeting for the contacting party from the message store,
• if the appropriate message greeting is not stored in the message store, adapting a message greeting stored in the message store from a first format that is inappropriate for a context in which the contacting party is involved to a second format that is appropriate for the context, based at least in part upon the presence data, thereby creating the appropriate message greeting, and
• sending the appropriate message greeting to a contacting party device associated with the contacting party, the appropriate message greeting notifying the contacting party that the party is unavailable.