Numerous situations in the world of telecommunications necessitate the use of one and frequently several user terminals. The latter can be, e.g., a personal computer, a telephone or even a personal assistant. The development of technology has allowed these different terminals to become capable of functioning on mobile or fixed telecommunication networks or even capable of functioning in both these situations. It is known in telecommunication networks that it is possible to communicate with these terminals with identical or different addressing techniques. This fact makes it possible for an application to communicate with all the user terminals on these different fixed or mobile networks with the appropriate communication protocols. The problem posed for the user is that the recipient user of the call can use several terminals and they can be in different physical and logic states (in service or out of service), connected or not connected to communication networks (on-line, off-line) with applications that are active or not active suitable for receiving the communications. Moreover, certain applications offer this user services permitting the user to accept or refuse communications or types of communications and to accept another one of them with the possibility of using the identity of the caller. On the other hand, the receiving user of the call can be temporarily absent and the call can become ineffective or be redirected to auxiliary equipment in the case of absence such as voice mail. This makes it difficult under such conditions for a user desiring to call another user to know what is the probability of an effective call.
A certain number of pieces of equipment have attempted to respond to this problem. They are, e.g., equipment that permits an instant messaging connection. That equipment is connected to a present server that permits identification of the nature and state of the connection with the terminal. One application also permits managing presentation of the states of different terminals that can be used by the user (disconnected, busy, free, unauthorized, sent back . . . ). The standardization organizations are also occupied with the standardization of exchange protocols that permits a client-server relationship to be established in an interoperable manner for communication of connection states and of the states of terminals. Among the latter, at least the following can be cited: the OMA (Open Mobile Allowance) or the IBTF (Internet Forum). The majority of these applications currently proposed permit managing a single terminal visible to the user capable of indicating availability for a communication.
It is clear that this type of process can only be applied to persons managing only a single terminal at a time. In the present world and especially with the appearance of mobile technologies a user will often manage several types of terminals simultaneously. For example, the user could be called for a voice communication by a terminal operating on a network of the public cellular type and simultaneously on a PC connected to a house for an exchange of messages. Identifying the state of the terminals of the correspondent that the user desires to call therefore becomes more complex. The caller then has the possibility of selecting the type of relation that he desires to establish with his correspondent (message or voice, for example).
A supplementary difficulty resides in the fact that the user can not be called on one of these terminals by a single address. Thus, if the user must be called on several terminals, the user must, e.g., be addressed in the following manner: name.forename.PC@domain or also name.forename.portable@domain. The major problem for this type of device stems from the fact that it is not always easy to know beforehand the method for addressing a particular terminal of a user. The instant message servers have found a solution. It consists of having only one user terminal connected at a time to an instant message session and thus to present only this one terminal and its state to the other users. Most of these servers claim the possibility of managing one user and multiple terminals whereas in reality they can not do this in a simultaneous manner. An example is U.S. Pat. No. 6,449,344.
In the solutions of the prior art the state of the user is presented in a unique fashion as a function of the state determined by the user in a non-specific manner for a particular piece of equipment.
For example, US 2002/075306 discloses a suite of collaboration services adapted in such a manner as to take charge of a plurality of integrated telecommunication services to which the members of a geographically dispersed team gain access via a virtual team environment client (VTE) that generates a graphical user interface (GUI) for each member of the team. Communication sessions are installed automatically by the suite of collaboration services in response to request messages via the GUI. The members of the team do not need to know an address for a communication device of another member of the team to start a communication session. That suite of collaboration services comprises a VTE server that communicates with the VTE clients, a presence engine that collects and maintains the status of the communication devices specified in a current profile of the team member and a call server that allows the installation to be controlled and the control of a vocal element for each communication session performed.
In that system, the problem is that if the user declares him/herself to be “available” for a piece of equipment of the personal computer type, the other users will see him/her as “available” in a general fashion for all his/her pieces of equipment of the connected “personal computer” type. In other words, the user will be indicated as “available” for all the connected pieces of equipment.
If the user wishes to declare him/herself “available” for a piece of connected equipment and declare him/herself “unavailable” for another piece of connected equipment, the only solution offered to him/her is to create a second identity for him/herself, the one of which is used for the pieces of equipment for which he/she desires to declare him/herself “available” and the other identity of which is used for the other pieces of connected equipment for which he/she desires to declare him/herself “unavailable”.
That system is, of course, neither ergonomic nor technically optimal. The other users have to know several identities for one and the same addressee and select the one identity as a function of the instantaneous state of declaration of the addressee. The user who wants to manage two contexts must manage several open sessions simultaneously, which increases the need for resources for memory, stream and the like.
Moreover, it is necessary that the other users know the list of the pieces of equipment of the user and manage a profile of the user manually, editing the profile of each user and giving information about the physical addresses of each piece of equipment (IP address for the computers, telephone number for the telephonic equipment, etc.).
EP 1225752 discloses a routing system permitting the intelligent routing of instantaneous messages between clients connected to a data network and between representatives of a client service connected to the network. The system comprises at least one instantaneous message server and at least one intermediary server connected to a network and addressable on the network, which intermediary server is capable of realizing the routing to the instantaneous message server and is accessible to the latter. The clients connected to the instantaneous message server via the instantaneous message software exercise a connection link announced by the instantaneous message server to establish bidirectional communication between the client machine and the intermediary server. In a preferred embodiment, the intermediary server interacts with the client in order to identify the client and the client software. The client request is then routed to a representative of the appropriate client service using software compatible with the rules of the company establishing an active instantaneous message connection between the client and the selected client service representative.
That system has the disadvantage of not being able to manage several sessions for one and the same user terminal since the states are proposed only for a specific terminal.
Consequently, no process is entirely satisfactory as concerns the supplying of services to identified persons.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds