Note: Descriptions are shown in the official language in which they were submitted.
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TITLE: TELEPHONE CAL~ TRANSCRIPTION WITH ELECTRONIC
DELIVERY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed to an apparatus
and a method ~or transcribing telephone calls as a digital
audio file, and forwarding the digital audio file
electronically to a pre-selected address.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
There are many instances in which persons may
desire to record telephone calls. For example, the use of
telephone conferencing in business discussions is
increasing, and it would be advantageous to have a
transcription of such conference calls for future
reference. It may also be possible that copies of
transcriptions of telephone calls be provided to third
parties. It is known to record telephone calls using an
audio recorder attached to the telephone line. While a
transcription of the call could be created, storage, ~iling
and subsequent retrieval of the transcription was extremely
difficult. In addition, the ability to forward copies of
the transcribed call to others is awkward, if not at times,
impossible.
With the advent of computer telephony equipment and
software, it may be possible for a user utilizing such
computer telephony equipment to record the telephone
conversation being processed by the equipment and software.
While such a situation may be possible, it requires that
any telephone call which is desired to be transcribed must
be either originated or received using the computer
telephony equipment. It is not possible to record
telephone calls which do not use such equipment.
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Personal computers and electronic mail systems
provide a highly ef~icient means of storing and
distributing digital information. Many forms of data,
including text, audio and images may be digitally stored on
a PC. Similarly, E-mail systems provide a ubiquitous inter
connective means of distributing these various forms of
data. In particular, the Internet now provides an almost
seamless interconnection of both private and public data
messaging systems worldwide. It would be advantageous to
be able to record and store telephone conversations in a
digital format when desired.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides for a telephone call
transcription system comprising a connection arrangement
connecting the telephone call transcription system to a
telephone system for monitoring telephone c~mmlln-cations.
The telephone call transcription system includes a
recording arrangement for providing a digital record of the
telephone c~mml7n;cation and a transmitting arrangement
associated with the recording arrangement connected to a
data network for transmitting the record of the telephone
commllnlcation to an electronic address accessible via the
data network or data base retrieval system.
In an aspect of the invention there is provided a
telephone call transcription system in combination with the
publicly switched telephone system. The telephone
transcription system is a user selectable caller service
which provides a digital recording of a telephone
comm1ln;cation of the user when the calling service is
selected. The transcription system comprises an activation
arrangement for initiating the transcription service and
identifying the user, a digital recording arrangement
connected to the telephone system for producing a digital
record of the call, a reference arrangement for determining
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an electronic address to which the digital record is to be
transmitted using a data network and a transmitting
arrangement associated with a recording arrangement and
connected to the data network for transmitting the digital
record of the telephone c~mm~7n-cation to the electronic
address accessible via the data network.
BRIEF DE~CRIPTION OF THE DRAWIMGS
Preferred embodiments of the present invention are
illustrated in the drawings attached hereto in which:
Figure 1 is a schematic view of a first preferred
embodiment of the telephone call transcription system of
the present invention;
Figure 2 is a schematic view of a second preferred
embodiment of the telephone call transcription system of
the present invention;
Figure 3 is a view of a typical email message
transmitted by the system of Figure 1 or 2; and
Figure 4 is view of a typical page of a web server
as viewed by a user.
DET~Tr~En DESCRIPTIQ~ OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
Figure 1 illustrates in schematic view a preferred
embodiment of the telephone call transcription system of
the present invention. As shown in Figure 1, when a user
desires to originate a call from a telephone originating
system 10, he establishes a voice path 12 to an intended
recipient 14. Depen~;ng upon the location of the user
originating the call this voice path may pass through a
PABX 16 to a local exchange carrier 18 and if the call is a
long distance telephone call, through an inter-exchange
carrier 20. The routing and handling of the call through
this telephone system is as is common in day to day
operation of telephone systems. From the PABX 16, local
exchange carrier 18, or inter-exchange carrier 20, as the
case may be, the telephone call is routed through a final
voice path 22 to the intended call recipient 14. It will
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be immediately appreciated that for those users directly
connected to the local exchange carrier 18 the telephone
call will not go through a PABX 16. In addition, for local
exchange calls, the inter-exchange carrier 20 is not
utilized.
The telephone call transcription system 24 of the
present invention is connected to the telephone system
described above in a manner to permit the transcription
system~ to monitor and record telephone c~mm-ln;cation
passing along the voice paths as described above.
Depending upon the arrangement of the telephone system to
which the user's telephone set 10 is connected, the
telephone transcription system 24 may be connected anywhere
along the potential voice path for telephone c~mml~n-cation.
Thus, for those locations in which the users' telephone
sets 10 are connected to a PABX 16 the telephone
transcription system 24 may also be connected to such PABX
16 via a transcription path 26. Alternatively, the
telephone transcription system 24 may be connected to a
local exchange carrier 18 via transcription path 28 or to
the inter-exchange carrier 20 via transcription path 30.
The particular connection arrangement 26, 28 or 30 utilized
depends upon the telephone system arrangement to which the
telephone set 10 is connected as well as to the user's
telephone call transcription needs or desires.
After the telephone call is transcribed in a manner
as will be explained below, the transcribed call is
forwarded electronically to a desired or pre-determined
location. Typically, such desired or pre-determined
location will be an E-mail address 32 or a remote database
34. In both of these situations, the transcribed call can
be retrieved by the user when and as desired. In order to
forward the transcribed call electronically, the telephone
transcription system 24 is is provided with an arrangement
for electronically transferring the transcribed call to the
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desired location. For example, as shown in Figure 1, the
telephone transcription system is connected to a data
network 36 such as the Internet which enables the
transcribed call to be transferred to the desired or pre-
determined E-mail address 32 or remote database 34.
Depending upon the particular setup, the connection of the
telephone transcription system 24 to the data network 36
may be through the PABX 16 along a data path 38, or through
the local exchange carrier 18 along data path 40, or
through the inter-exchange carrier along data path 42.
The operation o~ the telephone transcription system
of the present invention will now be described. When a
user originates or receives a telephone call which is to be
recorded, the telephone transcription system 24, which has
been monitoring the telephone line, commences to record the
telephone call as a digital audio file. During the
recording, if desired or necessary, a recording
notification tone may be generated by the system to notify
all users that the call is being recorded. Alternatively,
the recording notification tones may be manually initiated
by the user.
The call can be recorded in any of the commonly
used audio file formats such as a .WAV, an .AIF, a .SND, or
other standard ~ormats. If the call is recorded in a
st~n~rd format, readily available software systems may be
utilized for playback and manipulation. Alternatively, the
sound could be recorded in a proprietary format which has
been optimized to provide smaller files sizes for the same
length of recording as the standard formats. If the call
is recorded in a proprietary format, special software
systems would be provided to enable playback, manipulation,
compression, reforwarding and archiving.
In order to reduce the transcribed call file size,
low sampling rates and compression of the recorded call may
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be used. By using a low sampling rate, the size of the
file is proportionately reduced. While many sound files
for use in multimedia applications are currently recorded
in 16-bit stereo at a sampling rate o~ 44 kHz, such
recording levels require up to 11 MB per minute of sound.
For the recording of speech for the telephone transcription
system of the present invention, sampling rates of 11 kHz
or less are generally adequate, with a sampling rate of 6.8
kHz being preferred.
In addition, compression of the recorded sound
using standard or proprietary compression techniques may be
employed. Two commonly utilized compression techni~ues are
ADPCM which generally reduces file size by about 50% and
MPEG which can achieve up to 12:1 compression. As a
significant percentage of telephone conversations is
silence, a proprietary compression technique may be used
either alone or in combination with one of the other
compression techniques to further reduce the size of the
transcribed telephone call file. It has been found that by
using a combination of low sampling and a compression
techni~ue, file sizes of about 40-50 kB per minute of sound
can be achieved while ret~;n;ng the quality of the recorded
sound.
Once the telephone conversation has been completed,
the telephone transcription system 24 electronically
transfers the file cont~;n;ng the transcribed telephone
call to the desired or pre-determined location. After the
file has been transmitted, the file is preferably erased
from the telephone transcription system. The reason for
immediately erasing the file is mainly for security
reasons, however, by immediately erasing the file, the
amount of storage space required by the system is also
optimized. As a number of recorded telephone calls may
involve confidential information, it is desirable to
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maintain the confidentiality by erasing the ~ile ~rom the
telephone transcription system.
As illustrated in Figure 1, the pre-determined or
desired location could be an E-mail address 32, either the
user's own E-mail address or another pre-determined or
desired E-mail address. The telephone transcription system
could package the recorded telephone conversation ~ile in
an E-mail message and send the file as an attachment to
that message. As shown in Figure 3, the system may also
provide related information such as the time of day, date
and length of the call, the telephone number and caller ID
o~ the originating and or called party or parties, country
or city of origin or termination and voice path utilized
for the telephone call. For purposes o~ increased
security, the attachment and even the entire E-mail message
may be encrypted. As the original file is deleted by the
telephone transcription system, bounced E-mail messages
could also be automatically deleted or they could be
redirected to another location, such as a remote database
or an alternate E-mail address.
The desired or pre-determined location may also be
a remote database 34 maintained on a computer system
accessible by the user. The database 34 may be accessed by
the user using a data or a voice connection. For a data
connection, the user would connect to the database either
by direct dial-up connection or by accessing the database
through a data network such as the Internet. Once
connected to the database, the user may listen to the files
on-line or may download, archive or forward the file or a
copy to a third party. Similar to the situation with E-
mail, the message may also be packaged with other
information such as the time of day, date and length of the
call, the telephone number and caller ID o~ the originating
and or called party or parties, country or city of origin
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or t~rm;n~tion and voice path utilized for the telephone
call, all accessible from the database access.
For a voice connection, the user could access the
database by an interactive telephony session by keying in
responses to queries using the keypad of a standard
telephone set. In this way, the files could be listened
to, archived or forwarded to another address. For voice
connections, additional information could be appended or
prepended to the telephone call file in the form of
synthesized or pre-~ecorded messages. Alternatively, the
additional information could be in the form of text as in
the case of E-mail or data access and a text to voice
software system could be used for playback of the
additional information.
The telephone transcription system of the present
invention may be configured to record all calls, to record
only calls matching a certain criteria or only to record
calls in response to the user initiating the recording of
the call. If the system is configured to record calls
matching a specified criteria, the criteria could be based
on the originating and or receiving caller. For example, a
user could configure the system to record all calls
originating from or received by their telephone which would
be identified by a unique number. Alternatively, the
system could be configured to only record calls which
either originate from or are received by their telephone.
A third possibility would be to only record calls in which
a specified telephone number or numbers are one of the
parties involved in the call. Thus the system could be
instructed to record all calls placed to or received from a
specified third parties telephone number or ID.
If the system is configured to record calls only
when specifically instructed to do so by the user, the
instructions could be transmitted to the system in many
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ways. For example, the user may be required to enter a
special code and or a Personal Identification Number to
initiate the recording. Such codes or PIN may be entered
by using the telephone keypad to enter the digits in the
form of DTMF as part of a recording initiating process
which preferably takes place prior to initiation of the
call. Alternatively, such instructions could be part of a
credit card, telephone calling card or country-direct call.
It may be desirable or necessary in some circumstances for
the user to dial a specified number to enter this
information as an intermediate step prior to placing the
telephone call. Thus a user would first dial an access
number ~or the transcription telephone system, initiate the
transcription in a specified manner and then place the
telephone call which is desired to be recorded. Such a
system could be especially of benefit if the user were
placing calls from a pay phone or other telephone which is
not the user's own telephone.
The system may also be configured to enable
recording on the fly, i.e. recording of a call after the
call has been initiated. For example, if the user has
already started a call and desires to record the call, the
user could instruct the telephone transcription system to
commence recording by entry of a specified code such as the
entry of special digits using the telephone keypad.
The telephone transcription system of the present
invention may also be configured to enable the user to
cancel the recording during the conversation or to erase
the recording at the t~rm-n~tion of the call. These
features may be accessed by entry o~ special digits on the
telephone keypad or may utilize a data link to the
telephone transcription system to send such instructions.
If during the call, the user desires to cancel the
recording, they could press a particular key or combination
on their telephone set to cancel the recording. Similarly,
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if at the end o~ the call, the user desires to erase the
recording of the call, they could access the telephone
transcription system using their telephone and instruct the
system to erase the call. In order to provide the user
with sufficient time to do so, a delay could be built into
the system between the completion of the recording of the
call and the forwarding of the transcribed telephone call
file to the pre-determined or desired location. Typically,
this delay would be on the order of 5 to 30 minutes.
The configuration of the telephone transcription
service may be user modifiable. The user may be able to
access account information and parameters to establish the
customization of the system to their preferences. For
example, using an interactive telephony system, the user
could modify information and parameters by responding to
prompts either vocally using voice recognition software or
by generation of DTMF by pressing selected keys or
combinations. Alternatively, as shown in Figures 2 and 4,
the user could utilize their access to an on-line service
such as ~or example a server accessible via the World Wide
Web to modify or customize the system to their
requirements. Such information and parameters as security
and encryption access codes, recording parameters and
customer profile data including preferred E-mail address or
addresses or delivery may also be accessed and configured
or modified.
The telephone call transcription system, as shown
in Figure 2, may also be configured to provide real time
control and modification by the user via an on-line service
such as for example a server accessible via the World Wide
Web. The user could establish a connection to their
account provided through the web page of the transcription
service provider utilizing their own PC 32 or could utilize
any other PC such as another subscriber PC 60, to access
the web page. An example of such a web page is found in
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Figure 4. The user, by accessing the web page, would then
be able to control the transcription of telephone calls as
they are received, choosing to turn on or off transcription
at the beginning o~ or during the conversation. The user
could also perform other functions such as the erasure or
deletion of the transcribed call or redirection of the
transcribed call or copies thereof to alternate electronic
addresses such as an other subscriber PC 60. If desired
the user could also utilize the connection to the web page
account to add further information to the transcribed call
prior to its transmission. Such further information may
include further notes in the form of text or voice or other
such information. The user would also be able to use the
connection to modify system generated messages which are
appended to the digital ~ile as described above. Such
modifications could add to or delete from the system
generated messages or could specify which system generated
messages are to be appended to the file. The user could be
presented with a list of options or messages which could be
appended to the file and could select from the list of
options or messages which of those they wished to append to
the files. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art
that the active connection to the account could also be
used in other ways to optimize the use of the transcription
system by the user.
Although various preferred embodiments of the
present invention have be described herein in detail, it
will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that
variations may be made thereto without departing from the
spirit of the invention or the scope of the appended
claims.
