Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080227439 | Emulation of Private Branch Exchange Behavior - An apparatus and methods are disclosed for use by organizations that have PBXs at a plurality of sites. The invention pertains to cell phone calls from an to his or her “home” private branch exchange. For example, an employee who works at the Chicago branch office might call the Chicago office's PBX to invoke a feature such as setting up call forwarding, retrieving voice mail, etc. In the illustrative embodiment, such calls might be automatically and transparently directed to another PBX when it is advantageous to do so (e.g., for the purposes of security, reducing toll charges, because of unavailability of a particular PBX, etc.) Factors that might be used to determine whether to re-direct a call and to which PBX to re-direct a call include the day and time of the call, the network that the cell phone is currently connected to, etc. | 09-18-2008 |
20080240416 | Telephone with Enhanced Function Display and Selection Ability - A user interface, telephony device, and method for managing user control settings associated with a telephony device is described. The user interface displays a label array on a display device of the telephony device. The label array includes at least one row of labels, each representing a discrete function or feature associated with the telephony device. A button array is provided in the vicinity of the display device. The button array includes a corresponding row or rows of buttons, each button representing a discrete function or feature for the telephony device and corresponding to a label within the label array. One or more buttons in the button array are selectively illuminated to indicate a status of one or more functions or features associated with one or more labels in the label array. | 10-02-2008 |
20090022302 | Cost-Conscious Telecommunications Terminal - A method and apparatus are disclosed for routing calls over an organization's private network of private branch exchanges. In particular, when a member of the organization (e.g., an employee, etc.) places a call from his or her affiliated off-premises telecommunications terminal (e.g., cell phone, etc.), the call is automatically routed to its destination through at least a portion of the private network of private branch exchanges when doing so reduces the cost of the call. In the illustrative embodiment, the call routing is performed automatically and transparently via software on the affiliated terminals (i.e., employees' cell phones) and on the organization's private branch exchanges. | 01-22-2009 |
20090052650 | Rapid Response To User Input at a Telecommunications Terminal - An apparatus and methods are disclosed for use by organizations that have PBXs at a plurality of sites. The invention pertains to cell phone calls from an affiliated terminal to her “home” private branch exchange. For example, an employee who works at the Chicago branch office might call the Chicago office's PBX to invoke a feature such as setting up call forwarding, retrieving voice mail, etc. Such calls might be automatically and transparently directed to another PBX when it is advantageous to do so. In the illustrative embodiment, the need or desirability to redirect such calls to another PBX is ascertained while the caller is still in the process of entering all of the required calling information. The effect of assessing whether to redirect the call in parallel with the caller entering the information is to reduce the delays otherwise experienced by the caller when placing calls outside of the enterprise area served by the home private branch exchange. | 02-26-2009 |
20090191915 | Call-Handling for an Off-Premises, Telecommunications Terminal with an Installed Subscriber Identity Module - An apparatus and method are disclosed that enable an organization's enterprise-wide network to accommodate roaming wireless terminals that are affiliated with the local enterprise networks within the enterprise-wide network. In particular, the illustrative-embodiment system is capable of handling a wireless terminal such as a cellular telephone that is able to use different subscriber identity module cards, or “SIM” cards, in different geographic regions or service-provider networks. A mobility client that is part of the wireless terminal registers when it detects that a new SIM card has been installed at the wireless terminal, whereby the client provides the subscriber-specific information that the wireless terminal reads from the SIM card. The mobility client identifies itself to the server by a user identifier, such as the station extension with which the terminal is affiliated back at the home local enterprise network. Upon successful registration, the client receives an access number that is suitable for its current location. | 07-30-2009 |
20100002860 | Shared Mapping of a Station Extension within a Distributed, Enterprise Telecommunications System, to an Associated Telephone Number - A method is disclosed that provides the sharing of a station-mapping description with a first private-branch exchange, where the description has been initialized and maintained at a second private-branch exchange. Such a description describes a logical association between a station extension of an enterprise deskset and a telephone number of an off-premises terminal, such as a cell phone. As a result of the sharing across private-branch exchanges, an incoming call from a second employee's cell phone can be recognized, by a first employee being called, as coming from the calling second employee. This is because the incoming call is identified with the telephone extension of the calling employee's deskset terminal in spite of the call being placed from the cell phone, or other telephone number at large. This is particularly important where a large company engineers its enterprise's telecommunications system across multiple private-branch exchanges. | 01-07-2010 |
20120046031 | Call-Handling for an Off-Premises, Telecommunications Terminal with an Installed Subscriber Identity Module - Apparatus and method are disclosed that enable an organization's enterprise-wide network to accommodate roaming wireless terminals that are affiliated with the local enterprise networks within the enterprise-wide network. An embodiment of a system is capable of handling a wireless terminal, such as a cellular telephone, that is able to use different SIM cards in different geographic regions or service-provider networks. A mobility client that is part of the wireless terminal registers when it detects that a new SIM card has been installed at the wireless terminal, whereby the client provides the subscriber-specific information that the wireless terminal reads from the SIM card. The mobility client identifies itself to the server by a user identifier, such as the station extension with which the terminal is affiliated back at the home local enterprise network. Upon successful registration, the client receives an access number suitable for its current location. | 02-23-2012 |
20120218919 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR GRANTING FEATURE CONTROL BASED ON USER LOCATION - A communication system comprises a plurality of communication devices and a feature control module. The plurality of communication devices reside at a plurality of locations associated with a user and are operatively associated with a communication network. The feature control module is configured to identify a location of the user, identify at least one of the communication devices at the plurality of locations, and grant feature control for a communication session to at least one communication device based on the identification of the location of the user. | 08-30-2012 |
20130017813 | CHANGING THE USER INTERFACE AT A TELECOMMUNICATIONS TERMINAL - A technique is disclosed that changes one or more properties of a user interface at a telecommunications terminal based on an incoming call. When a first caller calls the telephone number of the terminal directly and the terminal answers the call, the terminal presents the direct call to the user through a first user interface. When a second caller calls a telephone number that is associated with a data-processing system and the call is then redirected to the terminal, the terminal presents the redirected call to the user through a second user interface. The telecommunications terminal can be a cell phone that belongs to a user, and the data-processing system can be a private branch exchange that serves an office enterprise network that the user belongs to, wherein the private branch exchange extends the call to the user's cell phone when the user is out of the office. | 01-17-2013 |