Abstract:
An apparatus and methods are disclosed that enable a caller to specify a condition of availability for a return call when the caller is unable to reach the called user. A condition might indicate a time interval in which the caller is willing to accept a return call, a location, or some other constraints. In the illustrative embodiments, when a caller places a call and is unable to reach the called user, the caller is prompted via an interactive voice response (IVR) system for one or more conditions of availability for a return call. As soon as the called user's terminal becomes available, a software application checks whether the condition of availability is satisfied, and if so, establishes a call between the caller's terminal and the called user's terminal.
Abstract:
Methods and apparatus are provided for establishing a conference based on the presence or preferences (or both) of one or more invitees. The presence of each invitee is evaluated on one or more devices. A media type is selected based on the presence information. User preference information may be evaluated for those invitees who are not currently present on a device. The selected media type for the conference may optionally be required to support the requirements of the conference, such as document sharing or video links. In this manner, the same communication application can trigger conferences of different media types (where the selected media type is most likely to lead to the successful establishment of the conference). In addition, the present invention allows a media type to be selected that will be more likely to lead to the successful establishment of a conference.
Abstract:
A method and apparatus are disclosed for prefetching Internet resources based on the estimated round trip time of the resources. Whenever a user clicks on an embedded hyperlink, the prefetching strategy aims to ensure that the corresponding document has been prefetched or can be fetched very quickly from its origin server. Web access time as perceived by the user is reduced, while also minimizing the network, server and local resource overhead due to prefetching. The estimated round trip time is obtained or approximated for all referenced documents. The “round trip” time or access time of a resource is the time interval between the sending of the first byte of an HTTP request for the resource until the last byte of the server response has arrived at the requesting Web client. Documents with the longest access times are prefetched first and prefetching generally continues until the estimated round trip time falls below a predefined threshold. An HTTP HEAD request may be used to determine the estimated round trip time of a Web resource. The prefetching agent can be configured to prevent prefetching of those documents that are quickly fetchable, dynamically generated or non-HTTP based resources, or those documents whose size exceed a certain limit, to minimize the network, server and local resource overhead due to prefetching. The thresholds applied to the list of documents to be prefetched can be dynamically adjusted by the agent, based on changing network and server conditions.
Abstract:
Disclosed are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for benchmarking the performance of a contact center of an enterprise with respect to online communications channels. A system configured to practice the method first identifies messages posted by users on an online communications channel during a first time interval. Each of these messages includes an identification of user problems encountered by the users. The system then identifies messages posted by agents of the enterprise on the online communications channel. Specifically, the messages identified are those consisting of an agents responding to the user problems identified in messages posted by the users. The system can then generate response performance measures for the enterprise. The response performance measures can be based on a temporal relationship between corresponding messages posted by a users and agents. Alternatively, the performance measures can be based on users' response to the responses provided by the agents.
Abstract:
A mechanism is disclosed that enables garbage collection of object instances that have persistent data and a mutable key. A mutable key capability is advantageous in a variety of applications, such as monitoring a set of users and their login status on a plurality of media servers (e.g., an email server, an instant messaging server, a voice mail server, a video server, an audio-conferencing server, etc.). Implementations based on the Enterprise JavaBean specification are disclosed for three illustrative embodiments of the present invention. The illustrative embodiments of the present invention can also be implemented in accordance with object persistence mechanisms other than Enterprise JavaBeans.
Abstract:
A mechanism is disclosed that enables the invocation of methods of object instances that have persistent data and a mutable key. A mutable key capability is advantageous in a variety of applications, such as monitoring a set of users and their login status on a plurality of media servers (e.g., an email server, an instant messaging server, a voice mail server, a video server, an audio-conferencing server, etc.). The methods that can be invoked include get methods, set methods, unset methods, finder methods, destructors, and business methods. Implementations based on the Enterprise JavaBean specification are disclosed for three illustrative embodiments of the present invention. The illustrative embodiments of the present invention can also be implemented in accordance with object persistence mechanisms other than Enterprise JavaBeans.
Abstract:
Methods and apparatus are provided for controlling an availability of a user in an enterprise environment. If an enterprise user requests to change an availability status on one or more media, a determination is made as to whether to grant the request based on one or more predefined criteria associated with the enterprise. For example, the predefined criteria may comprise resource needs or one or more policies of the enterprise. The predefined criteria may be expressed as one or more rules in a rule base.
Abstract:
Systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for determining expertise through speech analytics. The system associates speakers with respective segments of an audio conversation to yield associated speaker segments. The system also identifies a number of times a speaker has spoken about a topic in the audio conversation by searching the associated speaker segments for a term associated with the topic. The system then ranks the speaker as an expert in the topic when the number of times the speaker has spoken about the topic in the audio conversation exceeds a threshold. The audio conversation can include a compilation of a plurality of audio conversations. Moreover, the system can tag the associated speaker segments having the term with keyword tags and match a respective segment from the associated speaker segments with the speaker, the respective segment having a keyword tag.
Abstract:
Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for providing estimated wait times to consumers waiting to communicate with a customer service representative. The system accesses information about the consumer, analyzes that information, and based on that analysis places the consumer into a segment. The system then provides to the consumer an estimated wait time to communicate with a customer service representative based on the segment assigned to the consumer. Access to information about the consumer can be actively granted by the consumer, or passively acquired by a system configured to utilize publically available information.
Abstract:
An object persistence mechanism is disclosed that enables the generation of software objects that have persistent data and a mutable key. A mutable key capability is advantageous in a variety of applications, such as monitoring a set of users and their login status on a plurality of media servers (e.g., an email server, an instant messaging server, a voice mail server, a video server, an audio-conferencing server, etc.). Implementations based on the Enterprise JavaBean specification are disclosed for three illustrative embodiments of the present invention. The illustrative embodiments of the present invention can also be implemented in accordance with object persistence mechanisms other than Enterprise JavaBeans.