Conventional voice mail systems create a mailbox for a person associated with a called telephone number (i.e., the voice mail account “owner”). When incoming calls are unanswered within a certain number of rings, they are directed to a voice mail server, allowing the caller to create a recorded message to be later retrieved by the owner. The owner can typically access their mailbox either from the called telephone or remotely from other telephones in order to manage the mailbox, such as to record a personal greeting, to review message details (e.g., day and time of message), to listen to messages, and to delete messages. In most cases, the owner is required to enter a valid PIN (personal identification number) or other pass code in order to gain access to the mailbox.
Advanced voice mail systems now also allow a voice mail account owner to create and manage sub-mailboxes to which a caller can navigate from a general mailbox. In practice, the owner may record a personal greeting or name announcement respectively for both the general mailbox and each sub-mailbox. When an incoming call arrives at the voice mail system, the system would first play the general mailbox personal greeting to the caller and would allow the caller to either leave a message in the general mailbox or navigate to a sub-mailbox. Upon navigation to a sub-mailbox, the system would then play the associated sub-mailbox personal greeting and would allow the caller to leave a message in the sub-mailbox. The owner may then access the voice mail box and manage (e.g., play out, archive, forward, delete, etc.) any messages left in the general mailbox and any messages left in any created sub-mailboxes.
Conveniently, a voice mail account configured with sub-mailboxes can be used to provide a family voice mail system for a family telephone number, in which each member of the family has a respective sub-mailbox. In practice, a parent may set up a general family mailbox and may further set up a sub-mailbox respectively for each family member. When a caller reaches the family's voice mail, the caller may then leave a message in the general family voice mail box or optionally navigate to the sub-mailbox of a desired family member and leave a message for that family member. A parent or other family member may then access the voice mail box and manage any messages in the general mailbox and any messages in any of the sub-mailboxes. Similar arrangements could be provided for other groups of people (e.g., workers at a company) as well.
A problem with existing voice mail arrangements like this, however, is that each person having a sub-mailbox may be provided with global management access for the entire voice mail account, which would allow the person to manage not only the sub-mailbox (e.g., creating greetings and managing messages) but also the general mailbox and, most troubling, each other sub-mailbox. For instance, in a family scenario, a single pass code may be defined generally for the family voice mail account and may provide global management for both the general family mailbox and each family member's sub-mailbox. Unfortunately, with this arrangement, each member of the family will be able to manage each other member's sub-mailbox, which can be undesirable.
Alternatively, in another arrangement, each sub-mailbox holder may be restricted to manage only the sub-mailbox holder's own sub-mailbox. Yet a problem with that arrangement is that the sub-mailbox holder would be unable to access messages left in the general mailbox, or to otherwise manage the general mailbox. In that case, it would be impossible for a caller to leave a message that all of the sub-mailbox holders could generally access, without leaving the same message in each of the sub-mailboxes.
An improvement is therefore desired.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds