Methods for initiating telephone communications using a telephone number extracted from user-highlighted content on a computer
View Patent ↗Systems and methods for monitoring, making, managing and controlling telephone communications with a computer call assistant with an integrated voice/data communications system are disclosed. A call assistant computer application preferably runs on a personal computer (“PC”) coupled to the integrated system over a packet bus. The call assistant exchanges control and/or status packets with the integrated system preferably over a packet bus. The call assistant enables the user to make, receive and control telephone calls, monitor the status of the user's extension, voice mail, etc., and preferably operates with integrated systems capable of transmitting and receiving voice and data in multiple modes. In preferred embodiments, the computer call assistant operates with systems that are capable of multiple native mode voice and data transmissions and receptions with a communications system having a multi-bus structure, including, for example, a time division multiplexed (“TDM”) bus, a packet bus, and a control bus, and multi-protocol framing engines, preferably including subsystem functions such as PBX, voice mail, file server, web server, communications server, telephony server, LAN hub and data router.
1. A method for initiating a telephone communication using a computer call assistant program in an integrated system providing voice and data communications to a plurality of users, comprising the steps of:
initiating the execution of the call assistant program of a user on a PC of the user;
registering the call assistant program for the user with the integrated system, wherein status/control packets are exchanged between the call assistant program and the integrated system;
displaying at least one icon on the PC of the user that presents status information regarding a telephone extension assigned to the user;
displaying user-highlighted content on the PC of the user;
detecting activation of the at the least one icon;
extracting a telephone number with the call assistant program of the user from the user-highlighted content;
sending a telephone call initiation control packet from the call assistant program to the integrated system; and
initiating a telephone call via a telephone assigned to the user based on the extracted telephone number, wherein the integrated system controls the telephone assigned to the user.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the user telephone couples voice communications to a WAN over a TDM bus of the integrated system, wherein data from a packet bus is coupled to the integrated system and coupled to the WAN over the TDM bus.
3. A method for initiating a telephone communication using a call assistant program associated with a communications service providing voice communications to a plurality of users, comprising the steps of:
initiating the execution of the call assistant program on a computing system of a user;
registering the call assistant program for the user with the communications service, wherein status/control packets are periodically exchanged between the call assistant program and the communications service;
displaying at least one icon on the computing system of the user that presents status information regarding a first voice line assigned to the user;
displaying user-highlighted content on the computing system of the user;
detecting activation of the user-highlighted content;
extracting target information associated with a second voice line from the user-highlighted content;
sending a voice communications initiation control packet from the call assistant program to the communications service; and
initiating a voice communication via the communications service between the first voice line and the second voice line.
4. The method of claim 3 wherein the computing system is a personal computer.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein the first voice line is a telephone.
6. The method of claim 3 , further comprising the steps of:
determining a message waiting status by the call assistant program; and
displaying a message waiting indicator on the computing system based on the message waiting status.
7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising the step of:
periodically querying the communications service by the call assistant program for a current status information associated with the message waiting status.
8. The method of claim 3 , further comprising the step of:
periodically querying the communications service by the call assistant program for a current status information associated with the first voice line.
9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising the step of:
periodically querying the communications service by the call assistant program for a current status information associated with the second voice line.
10. The method of claim 3 , wherein the extracting step further comprises displaying to the user a plurality of information units associated with a plurality of voice lines and detecting user selection of the target information associated with the second voice line.
11. The method of claim 3 , wherein the extracting step further comprises determining if the user highlighted content contains alpha characters, wherein alpha characters contained are selectively converted to numerical digits.