Managing contact list status notifications in collaboration systems to reduce network traffic

An awareness notification management method comprising:

• managing, by an awareness manager, a contact list for each of a plurality of awareness service subscribers, said contact list including an active sublist having a plurality of active contacts and an archive sublist having a plurality of disabled contacts;
• monitoring, by said awareness manager, a status of any member of said contact list;
• querying, by said awareness manager, a history for at least one timestamp of a last communication exchange between said awareness service subscriber and any of said members of said contact list;
• classifying, by said awareness manager, any of said contacts as a disabled contact on said archive sublist if said timestamp for said contact is older than a predefined age;
• forwarding, by said awareness manager, to said awareness service subscriber awareness notifications regarding the status of said active contacts;
• and
• withholding, by said awareness manager, from said awareness service subscriber awareness notifications regarding the status of said disabled contacts in response to said awareness manager classifying said contacts as said disabled contacts,
• wherein said classifying is performed by a processor.

A method for representing contacts and their statuses, the method comprising:

• receiving, by a user, an active sublist having a plurality of active contacts and an archive sublist having a plurality of disabled contacts;
• displaying, by the user, said sublists wherein the members each of said sublists are visually differentiated;
• monitoring, by a server, a status of at least one of the plurality of active contacts and at least one of the plurality of disabled contacts;
• determining, by the server, a change in a status of at least one of the plurality of disabled contacts;
• and
• withholding, by the server, a notification regarding the change in the status to be sent to the user,
• wherein a contact list including the active sublist and the archive sublist is managed for each of a plurality awareness service subscribers.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying a computer program for enabling a computer to execute an awareness notification management method, the computer program comprising:

• a first code segment operative to manage a contact list for each of a plurality of awareness service subscribers, said contact list including an active sublist having a plurality of active contacts and an archive sublist having a plurality of disabled contacts;
• a second code segment operative to monitor a status of any member of said contact list;
• a third code segment operative to query a history for at least one timestamp of a last communication exchange between said awareness service subscriber and any of said members of said contact list;
• a fourth code segment operative to classify any of said contacts as a disabled contact on said archive sublist if said timestamp for said contact is older than a predefined age;
• and
• a fifth code segment operative to forward to said awareness service subscriber awareness notifications regarding the status of said active contacts,
• the fifth code segment further operative to withhold from said awareness service subscriber awareness notifications regarding the status of said disabled contacts, the notifications being withheld in response to said fourth code segment classifying said contacts as said disabled contacts.