Note : Les descriptions sont présentées dans la langue officielle dans laquelle elles ont été soumises.
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METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AUTOMATIC
NOTIFICATION AND RESPONSE
Cross Reference to Related Applications
This application claims the benefit of United States Provisional
Application Number 60/291,087, filed May 15, 2001.
Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to methods and apparatus for
communicating with one or more recipients, and more particularly, to methods
and
apparatus for automatic notification and response between an application and
one or
more recipients using one or more different media types.
Background Art
Enterprise applications need to contact people and have requirements
for how the contact is done and what responses, if any, are collected. For
example,
applications may need to contact all people who have certain interests, or a
particular
list of people or a single person. Applications may need to contact someone
immediately in a crisis or they may want to remind someone of a task at an
appropriate time. Enterprise applications also have requirements about what to
do
when the contact is unsuccessful, where success is something defined by the
enterprise.
Recipients, on the other hand, have their own preferences about how
and when they are contacted. For example, recipients may want particular
people,
such as a boss or family member, or people who represent particular interests,
such as
an executive from a Fortune 500 Company, to be given more flexibility in
establishing
real-time contact. In addition, recipients may routinely delay contact about
known
tasks, such as weekly status or expense updates, until a convenient time or
place.
Oftentimes, the preferences of recipients are at odds with the preferences of
an
enterprise or the implementation of a specific application. In those cases,
recipients
find creative ways to work around the application constraints, in order to
satisfy their
preferences, or find the enterprise's processes frustrating or even annoying.
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A number of notification systems have been proposed or developed to
enable applications to communicate with one or more recipients. Existing
notification
systems, however, are typically limited in media and function. For example, a
notification system may only send an electronic mail message to a cellular
telephone
or pager. In addition, existing notification systems do not support flexible
use of
different communication infrastructures. The growth of wireless services, for
example, such as those using the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP), described in
WAP
Forum, "Wireless Access Protocol 1.2.1," June 2000, has led to the development
of a
number of notification and response services that contact only one device and
thereby
push and receive responses to web forms on cellular telephones.
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), as described, for example, in M.
Handley et al., "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol," RFC 2543, March 1999,
provides a
registry where users can be associated with particular devices by registering
a SIP
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for the device. A number of SIP proxies exist
that
support the ability to contact the list of URLs recorded in the registry for a
given user
in parallel or sequentially to establish communication with the user. Call
Processing
Language (CPL), as described, for example, in J. Lennox and H. Schulzrinne,
"CPL:
A Language for User Control of Internet Telephony Services," Draft RFC draft-
ietf-
iptel-cpl-OS.txt, November 2001, is a language that is proposed for SIP
proxies.
CPL allows users to specify in advance how to select a specific URL
given characteristics of a SIP INVITE message (that is used in accordance with
the
SIP protocol to establish contact with the user), such as interpretations of
the strings in
the sender and target addresses or the subject of the INVITE. CPL also allows
users
to specify a timeout, so a sequential series of INVITE messages to specific
devices
can be tried when attempting to establish communication with the recipient.
Moreover, SIP allows each SIP device or endpoint to specify the preferences of
its
user as a weighted list of media types and human languages. Senders are asked
to
provide, from the media types and human languages that they have available,
the most
highly weighted media type and human language. SIP and CPL do not provide
support for interpreting the result of a communication, and taking different
actions
depending on that result. For example, once a telephone call is successfully
answered,
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SIP and CPL do not discover if the user hung up the telephone or actually
answered
the request.
While sufficient techniques exist for specifying data flow or program
flow through a system, the techniques that are available for specifying
communication
flow are typically rudimentary. A communication flow is the path of a request
from
requester to recipients. These existing communication flow techniques
typically
equate specifying a recipient for a request with some predefined method of
contact
such as sending an electronic mail message to a mailbox or a message to a
pager.
While a communication flow path is often thought of as a simple connection
between
two parties, modern communication capabilities enable a variety of
communication
flows. For example, a given communication flow can (i) contact recipients or
devices
used by a recipient in parallel or sequentially; (ii) wait for all recipients
or just some of
the recipients to respond to a request; or (iii) take a different direction
when a
communication error occurs.
A need therefore exists for a general technique for conveniently and
accurately specifying the parameters of a communication flow, such as the
recipients
for a request, and how, when and where each recipient shall receive the
request and
how the responses direct further communication. A further need exists for a
technique
for specifying the parameters of a communication in a manner that captures and
combines the requirements of applications and the preferences of recipients.
Disclosure of Invention
Generally, a notification and response system is disclosed that enables
one or more applications to communicate with one or more recipients using a
number
of different media, such as electronic mail, telephone, web page, pager or
facsimile.
Generally, the notification and response system (i) sends requests to one or
more
recipients, using the medium specified by each individual recipient; (ii)
collects and
processes responses; and (iii) forwards the responses to their final
destination by
means of the medium specified by the final destination.
Applications can frame requests in any one of a number of supported
human languages and media formats, and the request is automatically delivered
to the
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appropriate recipient(s), in accordance with the media and human language
preferences of each recipient. Thus, recipients receive messages from
different
applications or systems (or both) in accordance with their specified
preferences and
endpoint capabilities. The responses are returned to each application in a
format
convenient to the corresponding application. An application can send messages
to one
or more named recipients or in accordance with predefined recipient lists or
roles. A
recipient preference and role database provides centralized management of the
recipient lists, roles and recipient preferences. The recipient preference and
role
database records the role, people and device information, as well as related
communication flow information.
Applications use communication flow expressions to specify who to
contact ("Bob"), under what conditions to contact ("only if Ann said yes") and
when
to contact ("between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays"). Recipients specify rules
for
refining communication flow expressions with details of how, i.e., which
devices to
use, and when to contact them. Recipients may also automatically delegate some
requests to other recipients. According to one feature of the invention, the
requests
can be dynamically updated with new information until the request is
delivered, so
recipients receive the most current business information. In addition, the
parameters
of a communication flow expression (the who, what and when) are evaluated at
the
time the request is delivered, so that the request is delivered in accordance
with the
most up-to-date recipient preferences.
An application sends a request to the disclosed notification and
response system asking that a particular notification message be sent to one
or more
recipients and responses to that notification be collected and returned to the
requester
or forwarded to another application. The request consists of (i) a
notification
message, (ii) request parameters, (iii) a communications flow expression, and
(iv)
responses. The notification message can be framed in any one of a number of
supported human languages and media formats, and the request is automatically
delivered to the appropriate recipient(s), in accordance with the media and
human
language preferences of each recipient. The request parameters specify
information
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that must be available to the notification and response system to control the
behavior
of the request or to properly format the request (or both).
Communication flow expressions capture and combine the
requirements of applications and preferences of recipients. The communication
flow
5 expression portion of a request specifies the recipients) associated with a
request (the
"who"), as well as how, when and where such recipients shall receive the
request. A
recipient can be a role (e.g., "customer service"), a person (e.g., "Jerry"),
a device
(e.g., "800-555-1234") or a further communication flow expression to be
evaluated.
Each recipient is active, because recipients can provide communication flow
rules that
specify their communication preferences and to tailor their communication flow
to
characteristics of the sender, the topic of the request or the demands of
their schedule.
Generally, the communication flow rules replace the recipient's name in the
communication flow with further details about when, where and how to contact
the
recipient, according to the recipient's preferences. Communication flow
expressions
also specify what action to take when a particular recipient fails to respond
successfully to a request.
The notification and response system can employ success tests in a
communication flow to evaluate the values specified by a respondent to
determine
whether a particular contact has succeeded or not. A respondent is a person
who has
received a request and who has returned a response. As responses are received,
the
notification and response system will forward the attribute value pairs of
each
individual response or, after the request completes, collated results to the
final
destination specified in the initial request.
A communication flow failure can occur for two reasons. First, there
may simply be a failure to contact a recipient or a recipient may never
respond to a
notification, referred to as notification failure (the inverse is referred to
as notification
success). Second, the recipient may be contacted and subsequently accept or
reject the
request, referred to as response success (saying "true" or "yes") or response
failure
(saying "false" or "no"), respectively.
According to another feature of the invention, communication flow
expressions are evaluated using a three-valued logic. The three possible
values of the
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logic are notification failure (maybe), response failure (false) and response
success
(true). Notification success is a transitory state identified that occurs
before response
success or response failure. With many devices, it is only possible to know
that a
notification has been received when a response from the recipient is received.
Thus,
the success expression associated with a request can specify a three-valued
logical
expression on the variables that may be included in the response received from
the
recipient. The success expression tests logical combinations of values in a
response
and, if there is response success then the contact evaluates to "true," if
there is
response failure then the contact evaluates to "false," and otherwise, if no
more time is
allowed for a response, there is notification failure and the contact
evaluates to
"maybe."
Each communication flow expression includes one or more primitives
to specify whether to contact the recipients simultaneously or sequentially,
and when
execution of the sub-expression should terminate by defining a logical
combination of
success test results. More specifically, primitives combine directions for
parallel or
sequential communication with an evaluation of how the status of communication
with a recipient affects the communication flow. Other primitives control when
contact is made or how to construct a communication flow from lists of objects
found
by searching the directory.
The primitives employed by the disclosed notification and response
system can naturally be grouped into parallel/sequential pairs, as follows:
and/then,
or/else, races/delegates, and votes/polls. Parallel and sequential primitives
differ in
how the operands are evaluated. In parallel primitives, each recipient is
contacted in
parallel. Outstanding requests are canceled when they are no longer necessary
to
determine the truth value of the primitive. In sequential primitives, requests
are made
to each recipient in the order that they appear. When that recipient responds,
a request
is sent to the next recipient, if necessary, to determine the truth value of
the primitive.
Each primitive evaluates to true, false or maybe depending on the success of
the
communication with the recipients.
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A more complete understanding of the present invention, as well as
further features and advantages of the present invention, will be obtained by
reference
to the following detailed description and drawings.
S Brief Description of Drawings
FIG. 1 illustrates a notification and response system incorporating
features of the present invention;
FIG. 2 illustrates the notification and response system of FIG. 1 in
further detail;
FIG. 3 is a sample table from an exemplary request database employed
by the request manager of FIG. 2;
FIG. 4 is a flow chart illustrating a three-valued logic evaluator
incorporating features of the present invention;
FIG. 5 is a sample table from an exemplary recipient preference and
role database of FIG. 2;
FIG. 6 illustrates a portion of an LDAP directory tree from the recipient
preference and role database of FIG. 5, indicating the personal naming context
of a
number of recipients;
FIG. 7 is a sample table from another portion of the exemplary
recipient preference and role database of FIG. 5;
FIG. 8 is a sample table indicating a set of exemplary communication
flow expression primitives in accordance with the present invention;
FIGS. 9A through 9E illustrate truth tables for various primitives
indicated in FIG. 8;
FIG. 10 is a sample table summarizing the counts for each of the
primitives indicated in FIG. 8;
FIG. 11 illustrates the interaction between the request manager and
communication flow manager shown in FIG. 2;
FIGS. 12A and 12B, collectively, are a flow chart illustrating the
operation of the request manager of FIG. 11 in further detail;
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FIG. 13 is a flow chart illustrating the operation of the communication
flow manager of FIG. 11 in further detail;
FIG. 14 illustrates an exemplary web form that allows an application to
specify the parameters of a request for a team meeting;
FIG. 15 illustrates the compiled results of the request of FIG. 14;
FIG. 16 illustrates an example where a requester offers shares of stock
in block allotments for the initial public offering (1P0) of a new company to
preferred
customers for a four-hour period; and
FIG. 17 illustrates an exemplary electronic mail message that is sent to
certain recipients in accordance with the request of FIG. 16.
Best Modes for Carryin~ Out the Invention
The present invention provides a notification and response system 100,
shown in FIG. 1, that enables one or more applications 110-1 through 110-N,
hereinafter, collectively referred to as applications 110, to communicate with
one or
more recipients 120-1 through 120-N, hereinafter, collectively referred to as
recipients
120, by a number of different media, such as electronic mail, telephone, web
page,
pager or facsimile. Generally, the notification and response system 100 (i)
sends
requests to one or more recipients 120, using the medium specified by each
individual
recipient 120; (ii) collects and processes responses; and (iii) forwards the
responses to
their final destination by means of the medium specified by the final
destination.
FIG. 2 illustrates the notification and response system 100 in further
detail. As shown in FIG. 2 and discussed further below, an application 110
submits a
request to a request manager 1200 by means of an application interface 220
that
provides services for submitting or canceling a request, checking the status
of a
request and returning results to the applications 110. Applications can submit
notification requests and requests to cancel pending notifications to the
appropriate
application interface 220, for example, via an HTTP POST.
The application interfaces 220 may be embodied, for example, as
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or a number of commercial Enterprise
Application Integration (EAT) interfaces, such as the MQSeriesTM interface,
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commercially available from IBM Corp., or the J2EETM interface, commercially
available from Sun Microsystems, Inc. For each request, the application
interfaces
220 map between the external request representation and the internal
representation of
the notification and response system 100. Likewise, for each response, the
application
interfaces 220 map between the internal response representation of the
notification
and response system 100 and the external representation.
The request manager 1200, discussed below in conjunction with FIG.
11, tracks all the requests that have been submitted. As discussed below in
conjunction with FIG. 3, the request manager 1200 maintains a request database
300
that includes information about each request and indicates the status of each
request,
such as pending, cancelled or completed. The request database 300 can be
maintained
in memory or a persistent database in which the requests and their current
state
(including responses) can be stored. Among other functions, the request
manager
1200 assigns a unique identifier to each request that can be used to identify
the request
that a recipient 120 should receive and the request to which a response
applies. In
addition, the request manager 1200 modifies requests, if necessary, to ensure
that the
responses are forwarded back to the notification and response system 100.
As previously indicated, applications 110 use communication flow
expressions to specify the parameters of a given request. The request manager
1200
follows the directions of the communication flow in performing each media
specific
communication with a recipient. The request manager 1200 uses the
communication
flow expression services of a communication flow manager 1300, discussed below
in
conjunction with FIG. 13. The interaction between the request manager 1200 and
the
communication flow manager 1300 is discussed below in conjunction with FIG.
11.
Generally, the communication flow manager 1300 interprets the target
communication flow defined in the request into a more efficient, tree
structured
internal representation. In addition, the communication flow manager 1300
iteratively
traverses the tree representation and, in the process, expands non-device
recipients and
instantiates devices. At each iteration, the communication flow manager 1300
enters
any success test results that have become available and determines whether any
pending contacts should be canceled or any new contacts launched. The
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communication flow manager 1300 thus interprets and executes the communication
flow expressions to determine how to deliver the request to the appropriate
recipients
120 and to determine how to respond to the success or failure of each
communication
attempt.
5 A directory interface 250 maps between the internal representation of
roles, people and devices used by the notification and response system 100 and
the
representation in the recipient preference and role database 500. In addition,
the
directory interface 250 handles searches and other requests. The communication
flow
manager 1300 is generally presented with a communication flow that contacts
roles
10 and recipient's names that need to be resolved to devices that the
notification and
response system 100 knows how to contact. The directory schema and the
internal
representation in the notification and response system 100 can be mapped in a
single
class in order to support the use of other types of databases and make the
internal
representation independent of the particular directory schema in use. This
class also
provides a set of specific search and retrieval methods.
The media specific contacts 270 handle the actual delivery of the
notification and, in some cases, response collection. If contact via a
particular
medium cannot be made after a specifiable duration or number of attempts, a
notification failure message is returned to the request manager 1200. The
media
specific interfaces 270 are discussed further below in a section entitled
"Media
Specific Interfaces." For each notification message, the media specific
interfaces 270
map between the internal request document representation of the notification
and
response system 100 and an external representation. Likewise, for each
response, the
media specific interfaces 270 map between the external response representation
and
the internal representation of the notification and response system 100.
A web portal 280 serves data to the recipients 120 through a variety of
media and collects responses. The web portal 280 is a collection of servlets
that
provide access to a recipient's pending, completed and cancelled
notifications. This
includes servlets that display a list of pending notifications so that the
recipient can
select one to read or listen to, as well as a servlet to display the
notification and
another servlet to collect the response. The web portal 280 is structured this
way so
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that all notifications are delivered directly by the notification and response
system 100
and all responses are collected by the notification and response system 100.
The
centralized implementation allows the content of the notification to be
controlled, the
notification to be personalized and the notification to incorporate previous
responses.
Personalization data from the recipient preference and role database 500 is
handled by
the same rewrite mechanisms that modify form action tags to point to the
appropriate
servlet.
The notification and response system 100 mediates all requests to the
recipients 120 specified in the communication flow expression. This allows the
notification and response system 100 to record responses and communicate those
responses to the communication flow manager 1300. The communication flow
manager 1300 takes different paths through the communication flow based on the
content of those responses. For example, for an exemplary web application
program
interface (API), all requests are represented as web pages and those requiring
responses include forms for accepting the response. The requests are rewritten
to
direct responses to a given URL, so completion status can be recorded before
being
rerouted to the final destination specified in the original request made to
the
notification and response system 100. The routing and return processing of the
notification and response system 100 can be adapted to various methods of
specifying
requests and responses, such as those in unified messaging systems or XML-
based
APIs.
The present invention thus provides personalized message delivery
(recipients receive messages when and how they want). The notification and
response system 100 can deliver requests and collects responses in any one of
a
number of supported human languages and media formats, such as electronic
mail,
telephone, web page, pager or facsimile. In addition, the notification and
response
system 100 provides centralized request management for requesters and
recipients,
response collation, and transparent routing of requests from (and responses
to)
existing applications.
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Requests
An application 110 sends a request to the notification and response
system 100 asking that a particular notification message be sent to one or
more
recipients and responses to that notification be collected and returned to the
requester
or forwarded to another application. As used herein, a request consists of (i)
a
notification message, (ii) request parameters, (iii) a communications flow,
and (iv)
responses.
Notification Message
An application 110 can create one or more versions of a request in
order to support delivery via different media and in different human
languages. In
other words, the application 110 prepares data files that will be converted by
a servlet
into the type of document that a recipient prefers to receive and then passes
the URL
of the servlet to the notification and response system 100. For example, an
application 110 wishing to send a meeting notification to one or more
recipients can
create an HTML document containing the message along with a form to handle
possible responses, if any. This HTML document would then be stored on a web
server and the URL is passed to the notification and response system 100.
The use of a servlet to generate the message in a particular media
format illustrates one of the advantages of the present invention. The media
of the
message can be tailored to the recipient's needs and preferences at the time
of the
delivery, and the content of the message can be generated at the time of
delivery so
that it always contains the most up-to-date information. For example, many of
the
media contacts employed by the present invention initially provide an
indication to the
recipient that a notification message is available for the recipient, such as
a page
indicating that the recipient must call a designated telephone number to
retrieve a
notification message or an electronic mail message containing a hyperlink to a
web
page containing the notification message. The recipient thereafter accesses
the
notification message and is presented with the up-to-date version of the
notification
message at the time of the access. In this manner, the requester can update
the
notification message until the recipient actually accesses the notification
message.
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Reguest Parameters
A request has an associated set of parameters. These parameters
specify information that must be available to the notification and response
system 100
to control the behavior of the request or to properly format the request (or
both). As
previously indicated, the request manager 1200 tracks all the notification
requests that
have been submitted using a request database 300 that includes information
about
each request and indicates the current status of each request, such as
pending,
cancelled or completed.
FIG. 3 is a sample table from an exemplary request database 300. As
shown in FIG. 3, the exemplary request database 300 includes a plurality of
records
305-315, each associated with a different request. For each request identified
in field
330, the parameters recorded in the request database 300 include (i) a
requester
identifier (i.e., the name of the person or application that generated the
request) in
field 335; (ii) a response destination (e.g., a URL to which the responses
should be
forwarded or a communication flow expression indicating how to route the
response,
and an indication as to whether collated responses are to be sent at the end
of the
request or each response is to be forwarded when it is received) in field 340;
(iii)
subject (i.e., a brief description of the request that can be used, for
example, in an
email subject line) in field 345; (iv) maximum lifetime (i.e., the length of
time that the
notification and response system 100 should continue attempting to deliver
notifications and collect responses, following which time all pending requests
should
be cancelled and any collected responses should be sent to their final
destination) in
field 350; (v) languages (i.e., the languages in which the notification
message is
available) in field 355; (vi) content types in which the message is available,
such as
HTML, VxiVll, and plain text in field 360; the communication flow expression
in
field 365; (vii) a public/private flag indicating whether received responses
should be
visible or available to other designated recipients; and (viii) the current
status of the
request in field 375.
It is noted that the content of each notification message, including the
subject heading, can be provided by a given application 110 in one or more
supported
human languages, or automatically translated in desired supported human
languages.
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In a further variation, the language parameter in field 355 can be replaced by
a rule
that specifies how and when language translations should be obtained, and the
content
types parameter can be replaced by a rule that specifies how and when content
types
should be generated.
Communications Flow
As discussed further below, in a section entitled "Communication
Flows,"' the notification and response system 100 employs communication flow
expressions to specify the who, how, when and where of a communication.
Communication flow expressions specify the recipients for a request. A
recipient can
be a role (e.g., "customer service"), a person (e.g., "Jerry"), a device
(e.g., "800-555
1234"), a software application or agent (e.g., "calendar agent") or another
communication flow expression. In addition, a communication flow expression
specifies how, when and where the recipients shall receive the request.
Communication flow expressions also specify what action to take when a
particular
recipient fails to respond successfully to a request.
Communication flow expressions capture and combine the
requirements of applications and preferences of recipients. Communication flow
expressions are active recipient lists. Each recipient is active, because
recipients
provide communication flow rules that replace their name in the communication
flow
with further details about when, where and how to contact them, according to
the
recipient's preferences. These communication flow rules allow recipients to
incorporate their personal communication flow into the communication flow
expression for the request. Recipients use the rules to specify their
communication
preferences and to tailor their communication flow to characteristics of the
sender, the
topic of the request or the demands of their schedule.
Responses
As discussed further below, in the section entitled "Communication
Flows," the notification and response system 100 can employ success tests in a
communication flow to evaluate the values specified by a respondent to
determine
whether a particular contact has succeeded or not. A respondent is a person
who has
received a request and who has returned a response. As responses are received,
the
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notification and response system 100 will forward the attribute value pairs of
each
individual response or, after the request completes, collated results to the
final
destination specified in the initial request. In an exemplary implementation,
the
notification and response system 100 waits until the entire communication flow
has
5 been executed before returning any results, but the modification to return
each
response as it is received is trivial.
Communication Flows
Communication flows are characterized by communication flow
expressions, success specifications, communication flow rules and parameters.
10 Communication flow expressions integrate the communication requirements of
applications with the communication preferences of users. Communication flow
expressions specify the recipients for a request (either directly by name or
by means of
a defined recipient list or role). In addition, a communication flow
expression
specifies how, when and where the recipients shall receive the request.
15 Communication flow expressions also specify what action to take when a
particular
recipient fails to respond successfully to a request.
Communication Flow Success/Failure Specifications
Communication flow success specifications describe the conditions for
response success and failure at each step in the communication flow. In the
exemplary implementation, communication flow success specifications support
both a
system-wide default success specification and a requester-defined success
specification default for a particular communication flow. Alternatively, a
test
response status primitive, discussed below, allows a requester to specify the
success
specification for each recipient in the communication flow.
A communication flow failure can occur for two reasons. First, there
may simply be a failure to contact a recipient or a recipient may never
respond to a
notification, referred to as notification failure (the inverse is referred to
as notification
success). Second, the recipient may be contacted and subsequently reject the
request
or answer it negatively, referred to as response failure (saying "no") or
response
success (saying "yes"). "No" and "yes" have a semantic component, because it
is only
the application that can determine whether or not the recipient has acceptably
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responded (e.g., said "yes") to a request for the purposes of continuing the
communication flow. For example, response success may occur when a recipient
reviews a document and votes against its acceptance. The recipient has said,
"Yes, I
am done with the review," and the communication flow continues with the next
reviewer. On the other hand, response failure may occur when a recipient
reviews and
rejects a request for a software revision. The recipient has said "No, we will
not do
this software revision," and the communication flow ends or continues with
error
processing.
According to one aspect of the invention, communication flow
expressions are evaluated using a three-value logic evaluator 400, shown in
FIG. 4.
The three possible values of the logic are notification failure (maybe) during
step 420,
response failure (false) during step 450 and response success (true) during
step 440.
As shown in FIG. 4, notification success is a transitory state identified
during step 410
that occurs before response success or response failure, so it is not
represented
directly. With many devices, it is only possible to know that a notification
has been
received when a response from the recipient is received.
A success expression specifies a three-valued logical expression on the
variables that may be included in the response received from the recipient
120. That
is, a notification, in general, contains an HTML form, VXML dialog or
equivalent
object. The form, for example, associates a name with values specified by the
respondent. A success expression tests logical combinations of values in a
response
and, if there is response success then the contact evaluates to "true," if
there is
response failure then the contact evaluates to "false," and otherwise, if no
more time is
allowed for a response, there is notification failure and the contact
evaluates to
"maybe."
For example, consider an HTML page containing a notification that
contains one form with a single button named "Submit" that sets the value of
the
button to "true" when it is clicked. A success expression for this page would
be
"Submit = true." A notification of a stock price change might contain a pair
of radio
buttons named "Action" which can take the value "buy" or "sell" and another
field
named "Quantity" that can take a numeric value. A success expression for this
page
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might be "Action=buy & Quantitp1000." A success test can be specified, for
example, as "A ? Submit="true" ?," which means contact A and, when a response
is
received, define the contact to be "true" if the response assigns a value of
"true" to the
parameter "Submit." If the value of "Submit" is something other then true,
then the
contact is "false" and if no more time is allowed for a response to be
received, the
contact evaluates to "maybe."
An example illustrates the benefits of the three-value logic used in
communication flow expressions over a two-value logic. Suppose a person wants
to
contact Tom if contacting Joann succeeds or Priya if contacting Joann fails.
Using the
conventional two-value logic primitives then and else, this relation may be
expressed
as follows:
(Joann then Tom) or (Joann else Priya).
Now suppose further that Joann uses the same logic to specify that she prefers
to be
contacted via cell phone, or if that fails via office phone, or if that fails
to delegate the
request to Jerry, as follows:
cell else office else Jerry.
There are problems inherent in this formulation, since the requester
undoubtedly
wants to contact Tom or Priya based on the outcome of an actual response from
Joann, and Joann only wants Jerry contacted if she fails to respond (i.e., not
if she
responds with "no"). It is impossible to get all these outcomes from
conventional
two-value logic. As discussed in the following section, in the three-valued
logic of
the present invention, Tom is only contacted if Joann says "Yes," Priya is
only
contacted if Joann does not respond with "Yes," and Jerry is contacted only if
Joann
fails to respond at all.
Communication Flow Recipients
As previously indicated, communication flow expressions provide a
flexible, general technique for specifying recipients for a request and how to
direct a
communication in response to the replies received from recipients.. In an
exemplary
implementation, a recipient preference and role database 500, shown in FIG. 5,
can be
embodied as a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory,
described,
for example, in M. Wahl et al., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3),"
RFC
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2251 (Dec. 1997), incorporated by reference herein. The recipient preference
and role
database 500 holds objects that describe the recipients that can appear in a
communication flow expression. As shown in FIG. 5, the exemplary recipient
preference and role database 500 includes a plurality of records 505-520, each
associated with a different recipient.
For each recipient identified in field 530, the recipient preference and
role database 500 identifies the recipient type in field 540 and the personal
communication flow defined for the recipient in field 550. The types of
recipients
that may appear in field 540 are a person, a role, an application, a device, a
named
communication flow or a method for contacting an individual recipient. While a
person, role or named communication flow object can specify a communication
flow
expression for contacting recipients, the method for contacting an individual
recipient
or an application (or media contact object) is a terminal object in the
translation of
recipient names (i.e., the object is not translated further in the directory).
The object
includes attributes that are important for reaching the individual or
application that
may act as an agent for the individual; specifically, the address, protocol,
timeout and
retry intervals for making contact.
According to another aspect of the invention, referred to as dynamic
communication flow expression substitution, the binding of recipient names to
information in the recipient preference and role database 500 is delayed until
the time
of contact. Thus, the late binding aspect of the present invention implies
that a
recipient described as a role, such as the CEO of a company, can change until
the
system 100 begins its attempt to notify the CEO. In addition, the personal
communication flow of a recipient, such as the office phone number, can change
to an
away phone during a trip and still be used successfully by a request submitted
before
the trip began.
When a recipient is contacted by a media contact, the recipient can
request that a different communication flow expression be substituted for his
or her
expression in the communication flow. This allows the recipient to delegate
tasks
dynamically to more appropriate recipients. It also allows recipients to delay
the task
by substituting into the communication flow a communication flow expression
that
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has a delay clause, for example, "Joann after +04:00," which generates a
reminder to
process the request after a four hour delay.
FIG. 5 provides a number of exemplary objects in the exemplary
recipient preference and role database 500 that illustrate the different types
of
recipients. A discussion of the exemplary primitives employed in the recipient
preference and role database 500 is discussed below in a section entitled
"Primitives."
For example, as shown in record 505, the recipient "Joann" specifies the
following
personal communication flow for all requests with the expression:
(cell races email) delegates Jerry
Thus, when contacting Joann, a call should be made to Joann's cell phone and
an
email should be sent to her in parallel. If Joann doesn't answer, Jerry should
be
contacted to take the request for Joann (in accordance with the personal
communication flow for Jerry). If Joann answers the request herself, Jerry is
never
contacted.
In the example shown in record 510, the role SysAdmin specifies a
personal communication flow for routing requests to the administrator for the
current
shift:
(Sam between 0:800-16:59 or Sue between 17:00-00:59 or Greg
between 01:00-07:59) delegates SysAdmin
The role in record 510 directs requests to the system administrator working
during
specific times during a workday that starts at 8 a.m. If contact cannot be
made with
any administrator during the first work day of request processing, the clause
in
parentheses fails and contact attempts are repeated during the next day via
the
recursive SysAdmin reference.
It is noted that recursive references to the recipient, for example, those
in the SysAdmin role, are only permitted to follow a sequential primitive in a
communication flow where other termination conditions exist. In the SysAdmin
example, the request completes with true or false when a response is received
or with
notification failure (maybe) when a requester set time-out is reached.
Even with this precaution, it is possible to loop through circular name
references in the directory. For example, Joann's communication flow
expression can
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say "Tom" and Tom's communication flow expression can say "Joann." In this
case
also, distinguishing between parallel and sequential recursive references
avoids
uncontrolled, resource-intensive looping. All parallel circular references and
sequential circular references without other terminating conditions are
prevented
5 through analysis of the name translation history. While the previous example
concerning Joann and Tom would be an error, the following situation would be
acceptable: Joann's communication flow expression tries to contact her via
email and
delegates to Tom on failure and Tom's communication flow expression simply
delegates back to Joann (because Tom is on vacation). As a final precaution
for
10 requests that loop rapidly or over a long period to the same recipients,
the
communication flow expression can return an error when a specified maximum
number of contact attempts to a recipient is exceeded.
To continue the examples in FIG. 5, the named communication flow
"Reviewers" in record 415 specifies a list of recipients that must be
contacted in
15 parallel for a review:
Chris and Jerry and Benji and Jenny
A request to Reviewers succeeds when all reviewers respond
successfully. As discussed below in the section entitled "Communication Flow
Primitives," a "votes" primitive can be used to alter the success criteria for
this list.
20 For example,
Reviewers votes 2
completes successfully when two reviewers respond successfully.
It is noted that the media contact objects in the recipient preference and
role database 500 can also be agents. For example, a calendar agent might
supply
three media contacts that are combined in the following communication flow:
HoldCal then (Cell then ScheduleCal else CancelCal)
If HoldCal finds the requested date available, then the user is contacted via
cell phone
to approve the meeting purpose. If the user approves the meeting purpose, the
meeting time is scheduled; otherwise, the meeting is canceled.
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LDAP Directory Tree
FIG. 6 illustrates a portion of an LDAP directory tree 600 indicating
the personal naming context of a number of recipients. The LDAP directory tree
600
is a representation of the user preference information recorded in the
recipient
preference and role database 500. For example, the LDAP directory tree 600
shown
in FIG. 6 includes a personal naming context 610 for a recipient, Joann, and a
personal naming context 620 for a recipient, Tom. The personal naming context
610
for recipient Joann has defined rules, communication flow expressions and
media
contacts. The recipient Tom uses default rules, communication flow expressions
and
media contacts.
Communication Flow Rules and Parameters
Communication flow rules specify when to translate a recipient name
to a particular personal communication flow expression. Recipients can specify
conditions on parameters of the request, such as the title and requester
parameters, to
control which personal communication flow expression is used for a particular
request. For example, recipients can choose certain topics, as they are
expressed in
the title, or requesters for immediate attention via cell phone. They can
choose other
kinds of requests for later attention via email or the web.
Unlike other preference-based systems, preference processing in the
communication flow manager 1300 is a general mechanism that is integral to the
processing of the delivery of a request. The rules and personal communication
flow
expressions of a recipient 120 establish a personal naming context 610 for
that
recipient 120. The recipient's name and names in the recipient's rules or
communication flow expressions are translated relative to the recipient's
context.
Unlike other context-based naming systems, this rule-based preference
processing
does not obscure the global meaning of names. Global names remain visible and
usable to all. For this reason, recipients can easily use global names to
specify that
they want to delegate particular kinds of requests to someone else. Personal
naming
contexts 610 perform translations that are significant and appropriate to the
recipient's
context while supporting meaningful global names.
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Thus, as shown in FIG. 6, the personal naming context 610 for Joann
includes nodes corresponding to three communication flow rules, namely, a
manager
rule 630, a family rule 640 and a paperwork rule 650. Each recipient's
personal
naming context, such as the personal naming context 610 for recipient Joann,
is
S established as a subtree rooted at their InetOrgPerson {RFC2798} or
InetOrgRole
object in the LDAP directory tree 600. The InetOrgPerson object is an LDAP
standard object for describing contact information about people, and the
InetOrgRole
object is a subclass of the LDAP standard object class OrgRole { RFC2256 } .
For
example, in FIG. 6, Joann's personal naming context 610 is rooted at the
InetOrgPerson node labeled "UII7=joann."
Each personal naming context 610 can have three types of objects that
are relevant to communication flow expression processing: communication flow
rules,
named communication flow expressions, and media contact objects. In FIG. 6,
the
topmost three entries 630, 640, 650 in the personal naming context 610
represent three
communication flow rules with the names: MgrRule, FamilyRule and PaperwrkR.
The nodes 660, 670, 680 correspond to three media contact objects with the
names:
web, cell and email, respectively. The nodes 690, 695 correspond to two named
communication flow expressions: UrgentCF and RelaxedCF.
The communication flow rules, such as the manager rule 630, family
rule 640 and paperwork rule 650 specified by Joann would be defined in the
recipient
preference and role database 500. The corresponding objects from the recipient
preference and role database 500 that defines the manager rule 630, family
rule 640
and paperwork rule 650 are shown in FIG. 7. Specifically, the recipient
preference
and role database 500 includes a record 710 that defines the manager rule 630,
a
record 720 that defines the family rule 640, and a record 730 that defines the
paperwork rule 650.
Each communication flow rule, such as those shown in FIG. 7,
includes the following four attributes: active, order, condition, and
communication
flow expression. Active is set to "yes" or "no." Rules that are inactive,
i.e., set to
"no", are not considered when translating the recipient's name to a personal
communication flow. The order attribute is used to order all the active rules
in the
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recipient's naming context 610 for evaluation. The condition of each rule in
the order
is tested in turn. The conditions are logical expressions comprised of
attribute value
comparisons, such as equality, inequality, range, and regular expression
matching.
Once a condition is satisfied, the recipient's name is translated to the
accompanying
communication flow expression for the purpose of delivering the request. The
condition for MgrRule tests for specific requesters by username or uid. The
condition
for FamilyRule tests for titles that start with "Family." The condition for
PaperwrkR
is always satisfied. PaperwrkR is the default rule applied when no other rule
is
satisfied. For this reason, its order number is the highest number.
As shown in FIG. 7, each of the exemplary rules in records 710, 720
and 730 reference at least one named communication flow expression (urgentCF
690
or relaxedCF 695). The urgentCF or relaxedCF communication flow expressions
can
be defined as named communication flow expressions in the recipient preference
and
role database 500, as follows:
UrgentCF: cell races officephone races homephone
RelaxedCF: email races web.
In this manner, the named communication flow expressions allow the recipient,
Joann,
to establish various rules for being contacted, based on the conditions
specified in the
rule.
When constructing rules, it is often useful to create named
communication flow expressions for common methods of contact. In this manner,
a
recipient can update a particular preference in a named communication flow
expression once, and all the communication flow rules that reference the
changed
named communication flow expression are automatically updated. The rules can
then
refer to the named flows, sometimes using the same named communication flow
for a
variety of purposes. The rule, PaperwrkR, simply uses a named communication
flow
(relaxedCF 695). The rule, MgrRule, places temporal constraints on when the
recipient can be contacted urgently, and uses the relaxed contact
communication flow
at all times. The rule, FamilyRule, uses all available media contacts.
Communication flow rules also allow enterprise employees to provide
an urgent response with escalation. For example, assume an enterprise must
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immediately respond to a request from a customer, and a request is received
from the
customer with a title including the keywords "urgent business." Assume further
that
at least one employee of the enterprise has specified the following
communication
flow rule:
Title="*Urgent Business*";
Communication flow: (cellphone races pager) before +0:05 delegates
manager
The "manager" is a default named communication flow that uses the manager link
in
the recipient's directory entry to find the correct manager. The escalation
rule will be
triggered when a request is received with a title including the keywords
"urgent
business." If the employee does not answer his or her cell phone or page
within five
(5) minutes, the request is escalated to the "manager."
Typically, communication flows that achieve an escalation employ the
delegates primitive, where a request is cancelled before it is escalated to
the next
level. In a further variation, a communication flow can achieve escalation
without
canceling outstanding requests to earlier people in the chain. For example,
the
following exemplary communication flow achieves escalation without canceling
outstanding requests to earlier people in the chain:
(Tom else Manager) races (Manager after +04:00).
This communication flow will initially contact Tom alone, and will contact the
defined Manager immediately if the initial response is a failure. In addition,
the
request will be escalated to Manager after four (4) hours and only the first
response
from Tom or Manager will be accepted. It is noted that the notification and
response
system 100 can optionally maintain information about why a given request is
cancelled and can provide such information to the recipient associated with a
cancelled request.
In this communication flow expression, optimization is used to contact
Manager once despite the fact that the recipient named Manager may be active
twice
in the communication flow at the same time. Each instance of a recipient name
is
owned by the entity that contributed it to the request, i.e., by the
requester, or a person
or a role contributing a personal communication flow. If recipient names
identify the
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same object/recipient and the owners of the recipient names are same, the
recipient is
only contacted once for those names. If the owners differ, the assumption is
made that
the recipient may want to act in different ways as the delegate of the owner,
and so the
recipient is contacted more than once with a note about who delegated the
request to
5 the recipient.
The user preferences recorded in the recipient preference and role
database 500 and LDAP directory tree 600, and discussed above in conjunction
with
FIGS. 5-7, can be modified by presence and availability information. For
example, a
recipient can specify his or her preferences, as follows:
10 (present(cell) then cell) delegates (present(email) then email)
The present function contacts the presence server with the recipient and
device
information available for the cell media contact. If the presence server
indicates that
the cell phone is on, the present function returns "true." If not, it returns
"maybe."
Similarly, if the recipient is present on the network for the email media
contact, the
15 present function returns "true." If not, it returns "maybe." If the
recipient is present
on the cell phone, he or she is contacted via cell phone. If the recipient is
not present
or if the contact fails, then the network is checked and email is sent if the
recipient is
present there. The present function can be more or less sophisticated
depending on
the features offered by the presence server. Note also that the communication
flow
20 rules allow the recipients to limit which requesters or types of request
have access to
them through the presence server.
In another application of presence and availability information, a media
contact can optimize its behavior by skipping communication attempts (e.g.,
phone
calls) that presence information indicates will fail (e.g., cell phone is
off). The media
25 contact can simply proceed as if the attempted phone call failed.
The user preferences can also be determined by the enterprise. For
example, an enterprise can send notices to a customer with an increasing
degree of
invasiveness, based on the customer's payment history. For example, as
discussed
further below in a discussion of the "delegates" primitive, customers with
poor
payment histories can receive the first overdue notice by automated telephone
call and
the second notice through a collection agency. Customers with average payment
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histories can receive the first overdue notice by postal service, the second
notice by
automated telephone call and the third notice through a collection agency.
Directory Defaults and Heuristics
The communication flow manager 1300, discussed further below in
conjunction with FIG. 13, employs default directories in the LDAP directory
tree 600
(FIG. 6) for faster installation and ease of use. The communication flow
manager
1300 also enhances ease of use by employing heuristics when searching the
directory.
When the communication flow manager 1300 is first installed at an enterprise,
the
communication flow manager 1300 will run off of an existing enterprise LDAP
directory 500. In addition to information about the configuration of the
enterprise
LDAP directory 500, the communication flow manager 1300 requires the creation
of
object classes for its application specific objects (i.e., communication
flows,
communication flow rules, media contact, enhanced role and configuration
objects).
The communication flow manager 1300 also requires the creation of a
directory subtree 600 where it can store its configuration and default
instances of its
other objects. The default directories are used to provide communication flow
services to the people and roles that already exist in the enterprise
directory. These
people and roles can be enhanced with personalized communication flows and
rules at
the discretion of the recipients and their enterprise.
The default instances of the media contact objects use a substitution
facility that is also available to users who specify their own media contact
objects.
The address field in the media contact object can use angle brackets to
specify the
name of an attribute in the intended recipient's LDAP directory entry. The
value of
that attribute, if it exists, replaces the angle-bracketed attribute name in
the address
field on retrieval of the object. For example, <mobile> fills the media
contact object
address field with the value of mobile in the inetOrgPerson object that
describes the
intended recipient, Joann. More sophisticated substitution techniques are also
possible and within the scope of the present invention.
Along with the default instances of the media contact objects, the
communication flow manager 1300 creates a default named communication flow
expression and a default communication flow rule. In an exemplary notification
and
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response system 100, the default is to send every request to the recipient's
email
account and web portal: email races web. All of the defaults can be changed by
the
enterprise to fit its needs, and the default objects are available to users
who are
constructing their personal communication flow expressions and communication
flow
rules.
The full distinguished names of entries can be cumbersome and non-
intuitive. Thus, the communication flow manager 1300 uses a heuristic search
on
short names to locate the objects it needs. The full distinguished name of an
object is
specified by enclosing the distinguished name in angle brackets in a
communication
flow expression, e.g., <uid joann, ou=people, o=research.avaya.com>. The short
names have been used exclusively in examples herein.
When a name is encountered, the communication flow manager 1300
searches the directory subtree(s), e.g., 610, 620, used to store information
about
people, roles, named communication flows or personal naming contexts, as
appropriate. The communication flow manager 1300 searches by comparing the
short
name to the relative distinguished names of entries in the subtree. If no
match is
found, the communication flow manager 1300 will then search its default
directory
before returning an error.
Other parts of an enterprise or other enterprises can be contacted via
the local communication flow manager 1300 even if the external organizations
have
not installed a communication flow manager. If the external organization has
an .
LDAP directory 500, it can be incorporated into the name space of the
communication
flow manager 1300 in two ways. First, a "smart referral" or other mechanism
that
chains to outside directories for responses is used to incorporate the
external directory
into the local directory. In this case, the communication flow defaults for
the local
directory are applied to the external directory whenever defaults or personal
communication flow information is not available there. Second, the adv_search
primitive allows contact information for any external directory to be
described and
used by a requester. In all cases where defaults are needed, the local
defaults are used
unless the name of the directory subtree that stores defaults and
configuration for the
communication flow manager 1300 in the external directory matches the
suggested
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convention of the communication flow manager 1300. For this reason, it is
recommended that LDAP directories support the recommended subtree name for the
communication flow manager 1300. In the exemplary notification and response
system 100, that name is:
< ou=Xui Server, o=domain-name-of-server>.
Requesters sometimes have address books of individuals that they wish
to contact who are not in the directory. Sometimes, requesters have a strong
preference for contacting specific individuals by a particular media type,
such as a
telephone. In these cases, requesters can create personal naming contexts for
these
individuals within the requester's personal naming context in the directory.
Each
personal naming context for another person includes an inetOrgPerson entry for
that
person, and then communication flow rules, media contacts, and named
communication flows in the subtree rooted at that inetOrgPerson entry. The
requester
then specifies full distinguished names for each of these recipients in the
communication flow for his/her requests.
The communication flow manager 1300 will use the communication
flows specified by the requester 110 for the recipient. An enhancement of the
system
would extend the algorithm for searching for defaults to look first within the
requester's tree for short names, and then through the people and roles
subtrees of the
directory, and finally in the default subtrees of the directory. These
techniques are at
odds with recipients' specification of their preferences, so they should only
be used
for recipients who are not listed in the directory or for applications where
the
preferences of the recipient are irrelevant or need not be obeyed.
Communication Flow Primitives
As previously indicated, communication flow expressions specify the
recipients that shall receive a request and how, when and where the recipients
shall
receive the request. The primitives included in a communication flow
expression
specify whether to contact the recipients simultaneously or sequentially, and
when
execution of the sub-expression should terminate by defining a logical
combination of
success test results. FIG. 8 is a sample table indicating a set of exemplary
communication flow expression primitives. FIGS. 9A through 9E illustrate the
truth
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tables for various primitives indicated in FIG. 8. In FIGS. 9A through 9E, "F"
indicates a false response, "T" indicates a true response and "X" indicates a
maybe
response. The left column in each of FIGS. 9A through 9E indicates the first
operand
to respond and the top row indicates the second operand to respond (for all
primitives
other than the single operand "not" primitive). A "b" subscript on a T, X or
F,
indicates that both operands must be evaluated to get the indicated value.
Primitives
direct the flow of requests to recipients. More specifically, primitives
combine
directions for parallel or sequential communication with an evaluation of how
the
status of communication with a recipient affects the communication flow. Other
primitives control when contact is made or how to construct a communication
flow
from lists of objects in the directory.
The primitives can naturally be grouped into paralleUsequential pairs,
as follows: and/then, or/else, races/delegates, and votes/polls. Parallel and
sequential
primitives differ in how the operands are evaluated. In parallel primitives,
each
recipient is contacted in parallel. Outstanding requests are canceled when
they are no
longer necessary to determine the truth value of the primitive. In sequential
primitives, requests are made to each recipient in the order that they appear.
When
that recipient responds, a request is sent to the next recipient, if
necessary, to
determine the truth value of the primitive. Each primitive evaluates to true,
false or
maybe depending on the success of the communication with the recipients.
And/Then
The "and" primitive specifies that two recipients are contacted in
parallel, and that the communication flow is successful (evaluates to true)
when both
recipients respond with success. If the request to one of the recipients
fails, the "and"
primitive evaluates to false and the request to the other recipient is
cancelled if
possible. In all other cases, the "and" primitive evaluates to maybe. The
truth table
for "and" is given in FIG. 9A, where the values for the first operand to
respond are
along the left for each row and the values for the second operand to respond
are along
the top for each column.
The "then" primitive is the sequential form of "and." In other words,
the recipients are contacted one at a time in the order that they appear and
the second
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recipient is contacted only if the first recipient responds with success. The
truth table
for the "then" primitive, shown in FIG. 9B, differs from the truth table for
the "and"
primitive when the first operand returns maybe and the second operand would
return
false. The second operand is not evaluated in the case of the "then" primitive
and the
5 truth value of the "then" primitive remains maybe, while in the case of the
"and"
primitive, the second operand is evaluated and the primitive returns false.
This choice
was made for the "then" primitive to provide a more natural semantic
interpretation.
Or/Else
The "or" primitive specifies that two recipients are contacted in
10 parallel, and that the communication flow is successful (evaluates to true)
if at least
one recipient responds with success. If both recipients respond negatively,
then the
primitive evaluates to false. In all other cases, the primitive evaluates to
maybe. The
truth table for the "or" primitive is shown in FIG. 9C.
The "else" primitive is the sequential form of the "or" primitive, such
15 that the second recipient is contacted only if the first response is not
successful. The
truth table for the "else" primitive is the same as that for the "or"
primitive, shown in
FIG. 9C. In the case of the "else" primitive, the second operand is only
evaluated if
the first operand evaluates to maybe or false. The "else" operator is provided
to
address the scenario where a second recipient is contacted only if the first
recipient
20 says "no" or fails to respond (maybe).
Races/Dele ag tes
The and/then, or/else primitives are all focused on contacting enough
recipients to determine the success or failure of a communication flow
expression.
Sometimes, it is also useful to accept the first of many possible responses.
This is not
25 possible with the existing primitives, because they count votes until
success is
achieved or made impossible. The parallel primitive "races" succeeds or fails
according to the status of the first of its operands to respond. If the first
respondent
succeeds, the "races" primitive succeeds. If the first respondent fails, the
"races"
primitive fails. The request to the second respondent is cancelled if
possible. For
30 example,
Cell races Office races Email races Web
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succeeds or fails according to the first response received from a recipient
via any of
the following media contacts: cell phone, office phone, email or web portal.
Unlike the other primitives discussed herein, the "races" primitive
provides equal weight to a success or a failure response from one operand. The
and/then primitives respond immediately to the failure of an operand, but
waits for
results from both operands before returning success. The or/else primitives
respond
immediately to the success of an operand, but waits for both operands before
returning
failure. The "races" primitive responds immediately to the first response from
an
operand, and returns the result of that operand. It is particularly useful, as
shown in
the above example, for contacting an individual via multiple devices and
allowing the
individual to answer the request with success or failure via just one of those
devices.
The "races" primitive cannot be specified by the other primitives. The truth
table for
RACES is given in FIG. 9D.
The "delegates" primitive is the sequential form of the "races"
primitive. The truth table for the "delegates" primitive is the same as that
for the
"races" primitive. The "delegates" primitive only evaluates the right operand
if the
left operand returns notification failure (maybe). Like the "races" primitive,
the
"delegates" primitive cannot be specified by the other primitives.
Returning to the example discussed above, Joann can specify her
preferences as:
cell delegates office delegates Jerry
while the generator of the request specifies:
(Joann then Tom) or (Joann else Priya)
Jerry only responds if Joann fails to respond. Tom is only contacted if Joann
or Jerry,
in Joann's absence, say "Yes." If neither Joann nor Jerry responds, or both
say "No,"
Priya is contacted.
The "races" primitive was motivated by the need to contact one person
via multiple, simultaneous devices. For example, a recipient might specify
that a
notification should be sent to both her cell phone and office phone. To be
able to
specify that if the recipient responded via her office phone, then that
response,
whether success or failure, should also apply to the pending contact to the
cell phone.
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The "and" and "or" primitives did not satisfy this requirement. The "delegate"
primitive addresses, e.g., the scenario where a second recipient is contacted
only if the
first recipient does not respond or a series of devices is searched
sequentially until
contact is made with the recipient.
As previously indicated, the delegates primitive allows an enterprise to
provide personalized request delivery with escalation. For example, an
enterprise
involved in bill collection can provide personal communication flows for each
customer based on a relationship history with the customer, as follows:
good credit customers: web delegates email delegates sms delegates
homephone
poor credit customers: homephone delegates officephone delegates cell
Thus, as a customer fails to respond to each request, the request is escalated
to the
next contact method.
Votes/Polls
It is possible to generalize the sequential and parallel communication
flow primitives for lists of recipients. The parallel and sequential forms of
the and/or
primitives are special cases of two more general primitives that allow
parallel or
sequential voting by a list of recipients. For example, the successful "and"
primitives
are votes by two recipients where 100% vote yes, and successful "or"
primitives are
votes by two recipients where at least 50% vote yes.
A "votes" primitive contacts a list of a number, c, of recipients in
parallel and returns success (true) if a count, m, or percentage, n%, of
success
responses is reached. Thus, failure occurs if there are c-m+1 false responses.
Each
recipient can be a communication flow expression, and the count or percentage
represents the number of successes that must be received for the "votes"
primitive to
succeed. For example,
{Tom, Joann, Jerry} votes 50%
contacts Tom, Joann and Jerry in parallel. If at least two respond with
success, the
"votes" primitive results in success. The "votes" primitive fails (returns
false) when
enough recipients return false responses to prevent the specified count or
percentage
from being reached. In the other cases, where success cannot be reached, the
"votes"
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primitive results in maybe. In the above example, if at least two of Tom,
Joann and
Jerry respond with failure, the "votes" primitive results in failure. On the
other hand,
a true, a false and a maybe result in a truth value of maybe.
It is noted that it is possible to calculate the number of true votes
required to return true directly from the count or percentage in the
primitive. From
this, it is a simple matter to calculate the number of false votes required to
return false
(total count + 1 - number for true), and the number of non-true votes (false
or maybe
where at least one is maybe) to return maybe (total count + 1 - number for
true). The
"polls" primitive is the sequential form of the "votes " primitive.
The votes primitive can be used advantageously, for example, to sell or
distribute a limited number of items. For example, a company that has 500
units of a
given item and 5000 possible customers can specify the following communication
flow:
{customerl, customer2, ..., customer5000} votes 500
This request will complete when customers have ordered 500 units (assumes each
customer only orders one unit). For a discussion of an example where each
customer
can order more than one unit, see the discussion below on test response status
primitives.
The polls primitive can be used advantageously, for example, to fill an
urgent workforce need. For example, a school looking to find five (5)
substitute
teachers from an ordered list by tomorrow morning, can specify a communication
flow as follows:
{teacherl, teacher2, ..., teacherN} polls 5
As previously indicated, this request will complete when 5 substitutes
teachers agree
to teach.
Since communication flow expressions are not lists, it is useful to
convert expressions to the lists required by the "votes" and "polls"
primitives. In
particular, the named communication flows in the recipient preference and role
database 500 often naturally have a list structure. Automatic conversion is
supported
for the "votes" and "polls" primitives when communication flow expressions,
rather
than lists in brackets, appear as their first operands. The automatic
conversion is done
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for communication flow expressions that contain only conjunctions or only
disjunctions. If an expression contains only "and" and "then" primitives, it
is
converted to a list of its conjuncts. If an expression contains only "or" and
"else"
primitives, the expression is converted to a list of its disjuncts. Revisiting
an example
given above,
Reviewers votes 2
is actually the expression:
(Chris and Jerry and Benji and Jenny) votes 2
The conjunction is converted to the list { Chris, Jerry, Benji, Jenny}
automatically.
While it is possible to specify the details of converting any expression to a
list, it is
not clear that such conversions are necessary, clear or desirable. The search
primitives, discussed below, convert lists to expressions.
Generalizing the "Races" and "Dele:gates" Primitives
It is possible to generalize the races and delegates primitives for lists of
recipients. The generalization of races, called gen races, accepts a list of
recipients,
the number of responses to collect and a decision algorithm for determining
the
success or failure of the primitive from the responses received. For example,
one use
of gen races is to accept the value of the Nth response received. This
corresponds to
the radio talk show model of accepting the response from the 100th caller. In
another
example, gen races collects three of five responses and returns the majority
response
of the three. It is noted that this result is different from
{ A, B, C, D, E } votes 2
which waits for two successes. Gen delegates is the generalization of the
delegates
primitive. Gen delegates is similar to gen_races except that it contacts the
recipients
sequentially until the primitive is satisfied.
Implementing the Sequential/Parallel Primitives
The sequential and parallel primitives are implemented in the
exemplary embodiment with a simple counting algorithm. Each primitive is
described
by the number of true responses required to return true and the number of
false
responses required to return false. It is further described by the minimum
number of
maybe responses required to return maybe and the total number of responses
that must
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be received before maybe is returned. FIG. 10 summarizes the counts for each
primitive where C is the count of all the recipients listed in votes/polls and
X is the
number of true responses required by the votes/polls percentage or count.
Parallel and
sequential primitives count the number of responses received in each class.
Whenever
5 the requirements for one of the status returns is reached, the primitives
cancel
outstanding requests and return the appropriate status.
Status Interpretation and Temporal Primitives
As discussed above in conjunction with FIG. 4, the success of a request
to a recipient 120 involves notification success and response success.
Notification
10 success occurs when the recipient is contacted successfully. Response
success, by
default, occurs when a recipient responds in a way that satisfies the
definition of
success for the request and response system API. For the web API of the
notification
and response system 100, the default for response success is to reply to a web
form
without including the value of "false" or "no" for the submit button. A
"false" or
15 "no" for a submit button is the default response for response failure.
Some applications may require an application specific definition of
response success. For example, if an expense report is to be approved by
several
managers in sequence, success can be defined as responding to a request with
report status="approved."
20 The Test Response Status primitive allows applications to provide a
response success specification as a logical expression of comparisons of
attribute-
value pairs from the response. The logical expression is specified between
question
marks after the recipient whose response is to be tested. The comparisons can
include equality, inequality, range and regular expression matching. In cases
where
25 the success specification is the same for all recipients in a communication
flow, but
different from the system default, a request-wide default can be supplied.
The following example specifies the response success status without
using the default facility:
DepartmentHead? report status="approved"? then Director?
30 report status="approved"? then VP? report status = "approved"?
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When the Test Response Status primitive is applied to expressions containing
multiple recipients, it is applied to each recipient in the more complicated
expression.
For example, the previous expression can also be written as:
(DepartmentHead then Director then VP)? report status = "approved"?
Success specifications can perform aggregation and other advanced processing
on the
attributes of the response over all responses so far and then test the results
for success
or failure.
As indicated above, the votes primitive can be used to sell or distribute
a limited number of items, but assumes that each customer purchases exactly
one unit.
The following success expression allows each customer to order more than one
unit
and terminates notifications when at least 100 units have been sold:
(Sue or Fred or ... or Sam) ? sum (number sold) > 100 ?
After 100 have been sold, outstanding requests to other recipients are
cancelled.
When the notification offer is personalized with data available to the
notification and
response system, the results of the previous responses can be used to offer
the
recipients those items still available for sale (100 - sum(number_sold)). If
two
recipients attempt to buy the remaining items, the first will succeed and the
second
will be told that the request has been cancelled (i.e. the offer withdrawn)
because it
was completed by another.
Between/Before/After
In addition to the primitive that tests the response status, the
"between," "before" and "after" primitives specify the time constraints for
delivering
the notification and collecting the response from the recipient. A time
constraint can
specify the start time, as in the "after" primitive, or the end time, as in
the "before"
primitive or both, as in the "between" primitive. "Between x-y" can also be
expressed
as "after x before y." When multiple time constraints are applied to the same
recipient, the time constraints are evaluated from left to right. The first
time
constraint establishes an effective start and end time. Subsequent time
constraints
may refine those times. Relative time constraints can adjust the times either
forward
or backwards. Other constraints, for example those involving finding the start
or end
of an interval, can move the start time forward and the end time backwards. In
other
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words, if multiple primitives establish conflicting absolute start times or
conflicting
absolute end times, the later start time and the earlier end time are used
effectively
intersecting constraint intervals. When a temporal constraint primitive is
applied to
expressions containing multiple recipients, it is applied to each recipient in
the more
complicated expression.
Time constraints are specified using time expressions and time domain
expressions. A time expression denotes a specific instant in time, and a time
domain
expression denotes a time domain. We first define time domain expressions,
since
these are used in writing time expressions. A time domain is one or more
temporal
intervals specified as (start time, end time), where the start time is within
the interval
and the end time is not. The basic time domain is Eternity which is
conceptually one
interval from the beginning (Creation) to the end of time (Armageddon).
Creation is
taken as an arbitrary start time (such as the epoch in Unix, 00:00.00 UTC on
January
1, 1970), and Armageddon is treated similarly. Currently, time is specified at
the
resolution of seconds since Creation. Every other time domain is a set of
disjoint time
intervals (start, end) where the start of the interval is closed and the end
of the interval
is open.
Time domains are closed under union, intersection and complement,
which means that these operations on the domains always produce another valid
domain. Time domain expressions are built from primitive time domains (defined
below), and the operations of union, intersection, and complement. Just as
communication flow expressions can be named and used in other communication
flow
expressions, time domain expressions can be named and used in other time
domain
expressions.
Primitive time domains include the following:
An interval with a specified start and end time, such as from 9:00.00,
13 May 2002 until 17:00.00, 13 May 2002.
Any given day, such as 13 May 2002.
Any given week, such as Sunday, 12 May 2002 through Saturday, 18
May 2002.
Any given month, such as May 2002.
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Any given year, such as 2002.
Any given day of the week, such as Monday (meaning the union of all
Mondays between Creation and Armageddon).
Any given month, such as May (meaning the union of all Mays
between Creation and Armageddon).
Any given day of the year, such as July 4 (meaning the union of all July
4ths between Creation and Armageddon).
Any given time range, such as 9:00.00-17:00.00 (meaning the union of
all such intervals on all days between Creation and Armageddon).
For example, one could define weekdays as the union of the given days
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. One could define holidays as
the union of January 1, July 4 and December 25. One could then define business
hours
to be the intersection of weekdays with the time range 9:00.00-17:00.00. One
could
further refine business hours by intersecting it with the complement of
holidays.
Time expressions may specify an absolute time, or may specify a time
that is computed in terms of a starting time (such as four hours from now) or
may
specify a time that is computed from a time domain and a starting time (such
as, the
beginning of the next business day; or four business hours from now, meaning
four
hours from now counting only within the business hour time domain).
Time expressions may take one of the following forms.
Any absolute time, such as 17:00.00 13 May 2002.
A relative time, such as +4:00.00, meaning four hours after the current
time, or -3:00.00, meaning three hours before the current time.
The start or end of the next interval within a time domain, for instance,
the next close of business can be specified as the next end of an interval
within
business hours after the current time. More generally, one can count starts or
ends, for
instance, the second close of business.
A time elapsed within a given time domain, for instance, if it is now
16:00.00 on 13 May 2002, elapsing four business hours yields 12:00.00 on 14
May
2002. . One can also move backward from the current time; this is particularly
useful
after having moved forward. For instance, one can define a time domain for the
next
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vacation, and then refer to four business hours before the beginning of the
next
vacation.
More complicated time expressions can be defined in terms of these.
For example, one can define a (empty) time interval lasting from
S 12:00.00 to 12:00.00 each day. Taking the next start (or end) of such an
interval gives
noon on the next day. Using intersection with weekdays, we could similarly
calculate
noon on the next business day. Combining this with the operator that counts
ends of
intervals, we can compute close of business two days after noon on the next
business
day.
As another example, one might specify business hours in Spain as the
union of the ranges 9:00.00-12:00.00 and 14:00.00-19:00.00. To find close of
business on the current day, one intersects Spanish business hours with the
current day
and then finds the last end of interval within the resulting time domain.
The enterprise can define default time domain objects for the
communication flow manager or each recipient can define their own personal
time
domain objects. One exemplary use of such objects is to define the business
hours for
an enterprise. The object contains:
Common name (cn) of the time domain object: business.
Directory filter for which recipients use the domain. This can be used
to associate this business time domain with people in a specific company,
timezone,or
geographic area.
Timezone to use for calculating the effective times.
A time domain expression for the intervals in the domain. This time
domain expression can reference other basic or named time domains.
The time domain is used with the temporal expression operators "end
off', "start of', "n end of," "n start of," where n is a count or the keyword
last, "+" a
relative time within the domain, "-" a relative time within the domain in the
"before,"
"after," and "between" primitives, for example:
AFTER end of business
BEFORE 2 start of business
BETWEEN start of business - end of business
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BEFORE business + 4:00.00
AFTER end of business AFTER business -01:00.00
AFTER last end of (SpanishBusinessHours intersect Today)
Various simplifications can be made to make the syntax even more
5 natural. For example, if the name of a time domain follows after, one could
take the
next end of an interval in that time domain to be the designated time.
Similarly for
before, one can take the next start of interval in the time domain to be the
designated
time. This simplifies "AFTER end of business" to "AFTER BUSINESS," and
"BEFORE start of Monday" to be "BEFORE Monday." This also simplifies
10 "BETWEEN end of 08:00.00 - start of 17:00.00" to be "BETWEEN 08:00.00 -
17:00.00." A full time domain expression that uses union, intersection and
complement on existing time domains can also be used in places where the name
of a
time domain is used.
The standard default processing of the communication flow manager is
15 applied to resolving a time domain name with two provisos: the common name
of the
time domain object starts with the name specified in the communication flow
but can
also include other qualifications after the dollar character "$", as in
business$west-
coast, and the recipient must match the filter in the time domain object. If
several
matching objects are found, one of the objects is chosen, if possible the
object with
20 the logically most specific filter (the filter that implies all the other
matching filters)
or, if that is not possible, an arbitrarily chosen one of the matching
objects. The
communication flow manager first looks in the context of the inetOrgPerson or
inetRole object for a time domain of the given name with a matching filter. If
none is
found, the communication flow manager looks for the domain in its default
directory.
25 Short Names and Directory Search Primitives
The examples discussed herein show that requesters 110 can specify
recipients 120 using short names. As discussed below in a section entitled
"Directory
Defaults and Heuristics," these short names are translated by a heuristic
search of the
recipient preference and role database 500. Requesters 110 can also specify
the full
30 distinguished name of a recipient 120 in angle brackets, e.g.,
<uid joann,ou=people,o=research.avaya.com>. Specifying the distinguished names
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for recipients 120 can be difficult for users, because it requires them to
know the
structure of the LDAP name tree 600 (FIG. 6). Communication flow expressions
also
support search operations, so users can describe the attributes of one or more
recipient
objects in the recipient preference and role database 500. When users employ
search
operations, they do not need to know the distinguished names of directory
objects.
An exemplary search primitive, having a format such as "search (filter,
pattern, op),"
searches the recipient preference and role database 500 for person, role or
named
communication flow objects matching the specified filter. An exemplary
advanced
search primitive, has a format such as "adv_search (directory-server,
directory-port,
base, scope, filter, pattern, op)." The operation of the filter, pattern and
op parameters
of the advanced search primitive is the same as the search primitive. The
directory-
server parameter specifies the domain name of the host of the recipient
preference and
role database 500 to search, and the directory-port parameter specifies the
port number
of the recipient preference and role database 500 server on that host. The
directory
tree rooted at the distinguished name in base is searched on the server. The
scope of
the search is either base (for the object identified by base only), one-level,
(for
searching only the children of the object identified by base), or subtree (for
searching
the whole subtree of the object identified by base). Directory-server,
directory-port,
base or scope can be NULL, in which case defaults are applied.
Generally, the search primitives for communication flow expressions
include a macro facility for processing the results of the search. Each object
returned
is substituted into a pattern, given in the pattern parameter of the search
primitives, for
the token "<dn>". The result string for this object is then connected to the
result
strings for other objects with a user-specified primitive, given in the op
parameter of
the search primitives, for example, "and" or "races." For example, the
pattern:
(<dn> between 5/01/01-05/08/01) delegates (<dn> between 5/08/O1-
05/10/01 )
creates a string for notifying each recipient of a request once after May 1,
2001 and
again after May 8, 2001 if no response is received. If a response is required
from
every recipient before the completion of a request, the result strings would
be
connected by the "and" primitive to produce a communication flow expression.
The
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user also can restrict a search to returning only one recipient, as would be
apparent to
a person of ordinary skill in the art. Specifying how to handle multiple
matches to a
search protects users from unwittingly sending a sensitive request to a large
group
when they only intended to send it to an individual.
The search primitives can be used, e.g., to obtain expert assistance.
For example, if a requester needs information from an expert on a given topic,
such as
J2EE, the requester can specify the following communication flow:
search ("&((objectclass=inetOrgPerson)(expertise=J2EE))", "<dn>", OR)
Alternatively, the communication flow can be specified as follows:
expertl or expert2 ... or expertN
In a further example, a network alarm is raised and must be resolved by an
expert.
The requester can specify the following communication flow:
search ("&((objectclass=inetOrgPerson)(expertise=netmgr))", "<dn>", OR)
These requests will complete when one expert satisfactorily satisfies the
request.
The following table lists an exemplary precedence of the operators
(order of operations) from high to low. Operators at the same level associate
from left
to right. In general, parentheses can be used to change the order of
precedence.
Operator
AND, THEN
OR, ELSE
RACES,
DELEGATES
NOT
VOTES,
POLLS
AFTER,
BEFORE,
BETWEEN
SEARCH and
other
functions
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Request Manager 1200 and Communication Flow Manager 1300 Interaction
FIGS. 11 through 13 illustrate the interaction between the request
manager 1200 and the communication flow manager 1300. FIG. 11 is a schematic
block diagram illustrating the flow of information between the various
entities
associated with a request. FIGS. 12A and 12B, collectively, are a flow chart
illustrating the operation of the request manager of FIG. 11 in further
detail. FIG. 13
is a flow chart illustrating the operation of the communication flow manager
of FIG.
11 in further detail. In the exemplary embodiment, the request manager process
1200
and communication flow manager process 1300 process various predefined
asynchronous events that are detected during steps 1205 (FIG. 12) and 1305
(FIG. 13),
respectively.
As shown in FIG. 12A, the request manager 1200 detects a new request
received from an application 110 through an application interface 220 during
step
1210. The request manager 1200 then creates an entry for the request in the
request
database 300 (FIG. 3) during step 1215, and provides the communication flow
expression portion of the request, together with the request identifier, to
the
communication flow manager 1300 for parsing during step 1220.
As shown in FIG. 13, the communication flow manager 1300 detects a
new communication flow expression to process during step 1310. The
communication flow manager 1300 processes the communication flow expression
during step 1315, as necessary, and continues resolving each name in the
communication flow expression using the recipient preference and role database
500,
until a set of executable terminal nodes in the tree 600 are reached,
indicating the
media contact objects to employ for a given recipient. It is noted that
recipients 120
can enter and update their preferences in the recipient preference and role
database
500 using a communication flow management GUI 1110. '
The communication flow manager 1300 generates a list of devices to
contact and returns the list to the request manager 1200 as part of the
contact
scheduling information during step 1325. Generally, the contact scheduling
information includes only those contacts that are immediately schedulable by
the
request manager 1200. For example, if the preferences of a given recipient
indicate
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that the recipient may only be reached by telephone between the hours of 8 am
and 5
pm, then the communication flow manager 1300 would not schedule a telephone
media contact until that time window is valid.
More specifically, the communication flow manager 1300 parses the
received communication flow expression into a tree and begins recursively
processing
the nodes in the tree, for example, by walking the tree using a depth-first
search
approach, until a terminal node is reached. Each time a terminal (leaf) node
is
encountered in the tree, the media contact stored therein is processed. If a
given node
includes a parallel primitive, all nodes associated with operands of the
parallel
primitive are processed. If a given node includes a sequential primitive, a
right-side
operand is not processed until the left operand is completed.
Furthermore, before returning a media contact to the request manager
1200, the communication flow manager 1300 determines if the time constraints
associated with the media contact (terminal node) are satisfied. For example,
the
communication flow manager 1300 determines if the start time has been reached.
If
all time constraints are satisfied, then the media contact is included in the
list returned
to the request manager 1200. If all the time constraints are not satisfied,
then the
media contact is not yet included in the list returned to the request manager
1200 and
the communication flow manager 1300 sets a timer so the media contact can be
added
to the list by the communication flow manager 1300 at the appropriate time. It
is
noted that the media contact object is not retrieved until all time
constraints are
satisfied.
It is noted that the tree representation of the communication flow
expression can include back pointers to the root node in a known manner to
facilitate
the identification of relevant time constraints. If a named node for a person
or role is
encountered in the tree, a determination is made as to whether the name has
been
previously contacted with the same owner (same specified communication flow).
If
the name has been previously contacted with the same owner, then a second
contact
attempt is not made. Rather, status information is propagated from the
previous
contact.
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As shown in FIG. 12A, the request manager 1200 detects the received
contact scheduling information during step 1225 and attempts to contact each
recipient indicated in the contact scheduling information using the indicated
media
contact types) during step 1230, as discussed below in a section entitled
"Media
5 Specific Interfaces."
If the request manager 1200 detects one or more responses or message
expiration events during step 1240 (FIG. 12B), a record of the responses or
expirations with the corresponding request identifier is optionally created in
a
response database 1150, for example, during step 1245 for archival or record
keeping
10 purposes. In an embodiment where each individual response is provided to
the
requesting applications 110, the received response is forwarded to the
corresponding
application 110 during step 1248. The responses or expiration status are
forwarded to
the communication flow manager 1300 for further processing during step 1250.
The communication flow manager 1300 detects the received response
15 or expiration status with the request identifier during step 1330, and uses
the request
identifier to retrieve the appropriate communication flow expression during
step 1335.
When a response or expiration status is detected during step 1330, the
communication
flow manager also updates the tree representation of the communication flow
expression during step 1335 to reflect the status of the media contact. The
20 communication flow manager 1300 then propagates the status upwards to the
root of
the tree by determining the status of any superior operand that is now
determined, and
hence the operand is now complete, as a result of the status of the media
contact.
When an operand completes, outstanding media contacts for that operand are
placed
in a list of contacts to cancel. This list is returned to the Request Manager
1200 after
25 step 1350 or 1320 as appropriate. If the propagation of status does not
result in the
overall completion of the communication flow, which occurs when the completion
status of the highest operator in the tree is set, processing continues with
step 1315. If
the overall communication flow is complete, processing continues with step
1350.
Using the communication flow expression, the communication flow
30 manager 1300 determines if any additional communications are necessary or
if the
communication is complete. If it is determined during step 1340 that
additional
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communications are necessary program control returns to step 1315 to generate
the
contact scheduling information and provide further contact scheduling
information to
the request manager 1200. If, however, it is determined during step 1340 that
the
communication flow expression is complete, then the communication flow manager
1300 forwards a completion status indication to the request manager 1200
during step
1350.
In an embodiment where collated responses are provided to the
requesting applications 110, the request manager 1200 collates the responses
and
returns them to the final destination address indicated by the requesting
application
110 during step 1265, once the request manager 1200 receives the completion
status
indication from the communication flow manager 1300 during step 1260. A
completion status message is sent to the corresponding application during step
1270.
Media Specific Interfaces
In an exemplary implementation, media specific interfaces are all
subclasses of a single abstract MediaContact class that requires each subclass
to
implement two methods, one to initiate a contact and another to cancel it.
However,
although only two methods are required, subclasses range from very simple to
quite
complex, depending to some extent on the distribution of intelligence between
the
notification and response system 100 and the endpoints. Generally, for each
media
contact, the request is transcoded by one of the media specific transcoders
discussed
below to produce an encoding suitable for the particular contact to be
attempted. A
protocol specific communication interface handles the actual delivery of the
encoded
requests to each recipient.
This collection of classes can be thought of as a device abstraction
layer. Such a device abstraction layer hides all the complexity of the various
devices
from the other notification and response system 100 classes and exposes only a
few
simple methods to instantiate, initiate and cancel a notification as well as
some
parameter setting and getting methods that are uniform across all devices. In
the
following, a number of exemplary MediaContact subclasses are discussed.
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WebContact
The WebContact class allows a recipient to log into a web portal to see
lists of pending, completed and cancelled requests. The WebContact class
simply
inserts an item containing the name of the requester, the time of the request,
the
S subject and a hyperlink to the request URL into the pending list.
Cancellation just
moves the item from the pending to the cancelled list. The "recipient"
responds by
clicking on the desired notification and then completing the form that is
displayed.
PhoneContact
The PhoneContact class must initiate a telephone call rather than
waiting until the recipients calls or contacts it. In addition, the
PhoneContact class
can employ a Voice eXtensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) system that produces
an audio rendering of an VXML script (or another textual representation). The
PhoneContact class sends a message to an automated telephone dialer via TCP
specifying the request identifier, the media contact identifier, the telephone
number to
be dialed and the URL of a servlet that will return a VXML script for the
target
recipient. In case of a cancellation, PhoneContact simply sends a message
directing
that the phone call be cancelled if it has not already been placed.
The automated telephone dialer's control program queues the requests
for phone calls and executes them in FIFO order as soon as resources become
available.
EmailContact
The exemplary notification and response system 100 allows for three
different types of email: plain text, HTML and embedded dynamic HTML. In the
first
case, many recipients sometimes use text-only email clients. This includes not
only
text editor emacs and some web-based clients, but also wireless email clients,
such as
those commercially available from BlackberryTM and PaImTM. In this case, which
must be provisioned by indicating in the directory that email should be text
only, the
notification and response system 100 constructs a simple email message that
usually
contains the name of the requester, the subject of the request and a URL that
points to
the notification message. In an exemplary implementation, the requesting
application
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created the text message itself and also inserted the phone number of the
voice portal
that could be called for audio access.
For an HMTL capable email client that is not able to handle embedded
frames or layers, the EmailContact constructs an HTML page that again
describes the
notification but this time contains a hyperlink to the notification message.
For an
email client able to handle embedded frames and layers, the EmailContact
constructs a
message that embeds the notification so that the contents will be incorporated
when
the client renders the message.
One final complication for the EmailContact was the necessity to
interpret email messages that cannot be delivered. This is implemented by
providing
a main method that is, in turn, specified as the program to handle any
messages sent to
the notification and response system 100. This method then attempts to
interpret the
returned mail to determine whether it indicates that the delivery attempt
failed or
something else. If so, then the notification and response system 100 is
informed that
the contact failed. The notification and response system 100 can optionally
read
receipt requests and interpret them. This would make it possible to determine
that a
notification had succeeded even if no reply is sent and may be a necessary
capability
for some applications.
SMSContact
SMSContact handles notifications via the Short Messaging Service that
is available from many cell phone providers including SprintTM, VerizonTM and
AT&TTM. The SMSContact object does a provider specific HTTP POST or GET to a
web site to send the message. Although it is possible to do roughly the same
thing by
sending email to the service provider, the POST provides a bit more control.
The
POST carnes the expense of software changes when the provider web interface
evolves. The notification and response system 100 can optionally interpret the
confirmation email that most service providers send out once the message has
been
delivered. In addition to identifying when an SMS message has been
successfully
sent, this email will permit a determination of whether the service provider
web
interface has changed so the system can fall back to using email SMS delivery
until
SMSContact software is upgraded.
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FaxContact
The notification and response system 100 can provide a class to send a
notification to a fax machine, for example, using the fax capabilities of
Avaya's
AUDIX systems. The class converts an HTML or text page into a TIFF image file
and then generates a request to send the image via fax to the destination. The
class
also includes a simple status and management servlet that provides information
on and
some control of pending faxes.
AudixVoiceContact
The AudixVoiceContact object is designed to deliver the text version
of a notification to a recipient's voice mailbox. An exemplary implementation
is
embodied using the ViaVoiceTM product from IBM Corp. to render a message into
an
audio file that is then sent using essentially the same mechanism as
FaxContact to an
AUDIX server.
SIPContact
The SIPContact class connects the notification and response system
100 to SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) enabled end points. The Session
Initiation
Protocol (SIP), is described, for example, in M. Handley et al., "SIP: Session
Initiation
Protocol," RFC 2543, March 1999. SIP is a relatively new protocol defined by
the
Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) to setup and control a variety of
communications sessions.
To do this, the SIPContact class relies on a component referred to as
the SIP Execution Environment (SEE) that receives a message from the
notification
and response system 100. The message includes a SIP address for the recipient;
a
media contact identifier; a request identifier; and a list of available media
types and
human languages for this request. The SEE takes the SIP address and performs
an
"invite" on the address in accordance with the SIP protocol to establish
contact with
the recipient. The SEE then receives an OK message from the recipient device
indicating the recipient's preferred media and human language. The SEE
executes an
XFS request, discussed below, supplying the media contact identifier; a
request
identifier; and preferred media type and human language for this request from
the list
previously supplied of those that are available. The XFS request returns the
properly
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formatted content for notifying the recipient in accordance with the
recipient's SIP
preferences. This technique supports devices that prefer to receive multiple
formats
by allowing the SEE to call XFS once for each of the desired formats (some
devices
have screens and audio).
In an exemplary implementation, SEE can send an instant message or
call to a Microsoft XPTM softphone; call (via a version of MultiVantageTM call
processing software enhanced with SIP protocol support) SIP enabled Avaya
4624TM
IP phones with their call control protocol changed to SIP (instead of H.323),
digital
and analog phones; send instant text messages to SIP enabled Avaya 4624TM IP
phones with infrared capability and with their call control protocol changed
to SIP
(instead of H.323); and pop a web page on an experimental SIP enabled Avaya
4630TM IP screen phone with its call control protocol replaced by SIP (instead
of
H.323).
SIP complements the notification and response system 100 of the
present invention in a number of ways. In particular, SIP provides a mechanism
so
that a recipient can set up his or her contact preferences on one server in
such a way
that these preferences apply to anyone contacting him or her. While SIP
enabled
recipients can express their preferences via SIP, traditional recipients can
still define
individual communications flows within the notification and response system
100. It
is anticipated that SIP mechanisms will be used by recipients to control how
and when
notifications are received while communications flows within the notification
and
response system 100 will determine how and when notifications are sent to non-
SIP
endpoints and the SIP-specified preferred endpoints. That is, just as SIP and
unified
messaging provide control on how you receive messages, the notification and
response system 100 will provide control over how an enterprise sends out
those
messages. It is noted that SIP control over how you receive messages can be
enhanced with communication flow expression and communication flow rules
functionality, in accordance with the disclosure herein.
The SIPContact class also demonstrates some of the advantages of the
architecture of the notification and response system 100. In particular, the
content of a
notification message in the notification and response system 100 can be
retrieved by a
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web or phone browser or a MediaContact by calling a form servlet referred to
as XFS
with two arguments that identified the request and the recipient and device
being
contacted:
http://xui/XFS?Rid=xui-1234-1&Cid=1
where Rid is the request id and cid is the media contact id. The two together
are
sufficient to identify the recipient. XFS simply used the request manager 1200
to
retrieve the appropriate request, which in turn, was used to obtain the URL of
the
notification message. This message was then retrieved, rewritten to redirect
the
response and personalize the message and then forwarded to the browser or
other
destination.
To support multiple language and media types, the XFS servlet can be
modified to accept two additional parameters to specify the language and MIME
type
that was desired. For example, a more generic version of XFS allows retrieval
of
specific language and format types as follows:
http://xui/XFS?Rid=xui-1234-1&Cid=1&Ctype=text/plain&Language=ENU,
which specifies that the English, plain text version of request "xui-1234-1"
is needed.
The exemplary notification and response system 100 delivers a
notification to the SIP enabled Avaya screen phone simultaneously in two ways,
as a
voice message via phone and a web page pop on the screen. This was done by
having
the screen phone specify to the SEE that it can handle both web pops and audio
connections. The SEE then makes two calls to XFS, the first to retrieve the
HTML
page and the second to retrieve the VXML page:
http://xui/XFS?Rid=xui-1234-1 &Cid=1 &Ctype=text/html&Language=ENU;
http://xui/XFS?Rid=xui-1234-1 &Cid=1 &Ctype=text/vxml&Language=ENU.
EXEMPLARY EMBODIIVVIENTS
As previously indicated, the notification and response system 100
allows an application 110 (the requester) to ask a question, specify the types
of
response desired, and receive a collated set of responses from recipients via
email.
FIG. 14 illustrates a web form 1400 that allows an application 110 to specify
the
parameters of a request for a team meeting. In the example of FIG. 14, Joann
is
sending a request to schedule a meeting to "YangQian" and "Petsche." If these
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recipients agree to the meeting time and place, then the request is forwarded
to their
manager (cmk) to see if he can also attend. The generated request is sent to
the
indicated recipients via different media contacts, as appropriate. The request
includes
a yes button and a no button for answering the request. FIG. 15 shows the
compiled
results of the request. As indicated in FIG. 15, Petsche could attend the
meeting but
YangQian could not attend the meeting, so their manager was not contacted.
In another example shown in FIG. 16, the requester offers shares of
stock in block allotments on the IPO of a new company to preferred customers
for a
four-hour period. Temporal constraints are applied to a named communication
flow,
PreferredCustomers. PreferredCustomers translates to a parallel conjunction of
recipients. The requester provides a series of options in the request to
his/her best
customers. The email version of the request, as received by each recipient
defined by
the named communication flow, PreferredCustomers, who has specified an email
preference is shown in FIG. 17. Collated responses are returned as soon as all
recipients respond or the four-hour period of the offer expires. If a
recipient fails to
respond in the four-hour period and then attempts to view or respond to the
request, an
appropriate message is displayed and the reply is neither solicited nor
accepted.
Another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, referred to as
"Reverse 911," allows the notification and response system 100 to provide an
urgent
911 response. For example, communication flow expressions and rules can be
defined to notify parents when there is an urgent problem at a school. In such
a case,
it is difficult for a school to marshal the necessary resources in an
emergency that are
required to contact the parent or guardian of each child in the school. The
Reverse
911 system of the present invention provides an automated technique for
contacting
parents, and can also provide significant safeguards to prevent improper or
fraudulent
use and to minimize false alarms. The Reverse 911 system requires parents to
register
their preferences for being contacted in an emergency with a service provider.
Once
activated, the schools can use a web interface or electronic mail to initiate
contact with
all the parents in parallel. The notification can optionally include a button
for the
parents to acknowledge receipt of the message. In addition, the school can
specify an
approval process requesterusing the techniques described herein that must be
satisfied
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before the notification is sent to the parents, and also enhance this security
with other
security features (e.g., secure login and access control to authenticate the
requester).
In this manner, the present invention can provide "human in the loop"
security.
The same Reverse 911 system can be employed in further variations,
for example, to assist the Red Cross or a government agency to find and
schedule
blood donors in a time of crisis, or to contact residents in a neighborhood
about a
particular hazard, such as a chemical spill, as would be apparent to a person
of
ordinary skill in the art, based on the disclosure herein.
In yet another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, referred
to as "Adaptable Scheduling," the notification and response system 100 can
notify
designated recipients of a schedule change. For example, if a mode of mass
transportation is delayed, such as a train or airline flight, or a commuter
encounters
traffic on his or her way to a meeting, the notification and response system
100 can be
configured to notify interested parties of the schedule changes, and
coordinate
appropriate revisions to the schedules of participants. The calendar agent
techniques
described herein, for example, allow such schedule revisions to be
automatically
performed. A passenger can specify a communication flow rule that is
initiated, for
example, if an electronic mail message is received with the title = "Flight
Information*." The communication flow rule can provide information on who to
contact in the event of a delay, such as a limousine service, colleague or
spouse. The
notification can provide information specific to the affected recipient. For
example,
the notice to the limousine service can request an alternate pickup time, and
the notice
to the colleague can request that a meeting be rescheduled (e.g., using the
calendar
agent) or that the colleague attend the meeting in the absence of the delayed
passenger
(using the delegates feature).
As is known in the art, the methods and apparatus discussed herein
may be distributed as an article of manufacture that itself comprises a
computer
readable medium having computer readable code means embodied thereon. The
computer readable program code means is operable, in conjunction with a
computer
system, to carry out all or some of the steps to perform the methods or create
the
apparatuses discussed herein. The computer readable medium may be a recordable
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medium (e.g., floppy disks, hard drives, compact disks, or memory cards) or
may be a
transmission medium (e.g., a network comprising fiber-optics, the world-wide
web,
cables, or a wireless channel using time-division multiple access, code-
division
multiple access, or other radio-frequency channel). Any medium known or
developed
that can store information suitable for use with a computer system may be
used. The
computer-readable code means is any mechanism for allowing a computer to read
instructions and data, such as magnetic variations on a magnetic media or
height
variations on the surface of a compact disk.
The computer systems and servers described herein each contain a
memory that will configure the associated processors to implement the methods,
steps,
and functions disclosed herein. The memories could be distributed or local and
the
processors could be distributed or singular. The memories could be implemented
as an
electrical, magnetic or optical memory, or any combination of these or other
types of
storage devices. Moreover, the term "memory" should be construed broadly
enough to
encompass any information able to be read from or written to an address in the
addressable space accessed by an associated processor. With this definition,
information on a network is still within a memory because the associated
processor
can retrieve the information from the network.
It is to be understood that the embodiments and variations shown and
described herein are merely illustrative of the principles of this invention
and that
various modifications may be implemented by those skilled in the art without
departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
