Method and apparatus for provisioning a communications client on a host device
View Patent ↗An apparatus for provisioning a data communications client on a host communications device, the host communications device adapted to operate on a communications network, the apparatus comprising: a first data store adapted to store variant configuration information; a second data store adapted to store provisioning information; a provisioning module adapted to select the provisioning information stored in said second data store as a function of the variant configuration information stored in said first data store and apply the selected provisioning information to provision the data communications client; and a user interface interacting with said provisioning module to enable a user of the host communications device to provision the data communications client.
1. A host communications device certified for operation on a wireless communications network, the device comprising:
a host-independent data communications client;
an abstraction layer for communication between the certified host communications device and the host independent communications client;
at least one data store for storing variant configuration information and provisioning information; and
a provisioning application and configuration application on said host-independent communications client, the provisioning application and configuration application configured to select the provisioning information stored in said at least one data store as a function of the variant configuration information and apply the selected provisioning information to provision the host-independent data communications client utilizing said abstraction layer.
2. The device of claim 1 , wherein the variant configuration information includes a parameter selected from the group consisting of a device variant parameter, a lock parameter, and a default language parameter.
3. The device of claim 2 , wherein at least one portion of the variant configuration information is read-only.
4. The device of claim 1 , wherein the variant configuration information includes a current variant.
5. The device of claim 1 , wherein the variant configuration information includes a change flag.
6. The device of claim 1 , wherein the provisioning configuration information includes text that appears in the data communications client during a first time start of the host communications device.
7. The device of claim 1 , wherein the provisioning configuration information includes data communications client provisioning configuration information.
8. The device of claim 7 , wherein the data communications client provisioning information is set by the manufacturer of the data communications client.
9. The device of claim 7 , wherein the data communications client provisioning information is set by the operator of the communications network.
10. The device of claim 7 , wherein at least one data store is further configured to read information to control application functionality of the data communications client.
11. The device of claim 10 , wherein at least one data store is further configured to store the information to control application functionality of the data communications client.
12. The device of claim 11 , wherein the first data store is further configured to set a change service flag.
13. The device as recited in claim 1 , wherein at least one data store data store is configured to store read-only operator settings.
14. The device of claim 13 , wherein the data communications client retrieves the read-only operator settings from at least one data store.
15. The device of claim 1 , further comprising a notification module to notify the host communications device of changes at the data communications client.
16. A method for provisioning a host-independent data communications client on a host communications device certified to operate on a wireless communications network, the method comprising the steps of:
storing variant configuration information and provisioning information in at least one data store on said host communications device;
selecting, from the data communications client through an abstraction layer, the provisioning information stored in at least one data store data store as a function of the variant configuration information; and
applying, through the abstraction layer, the selected provisioning information to provision the data communications client.
17. The method of claim 16 , wherein said variant configuration information is also applied to native host applications.
18. The method of claim 16 , wherein the method further comprises clearing said data communications client of data using a clear data store prior to said applying step.
19. The method of claim 16 , wherein the method further comprises clearing data from host native applications on said host communications device using a clear data store prior to said applying step.
20. The method of claim 16 , wherein said storing provisioning information step is performed during a manufacturing process.
21. The method of claim 16 , wherein said storing provisioning information step is performed during a configuration process.
22. The method of claim 17 , wherein the applying step for host native applications is performed based on a command received from said data communications client at said native host applications.
23. The method of claim 17 , wherein the applying step for host native applications is performed based on a listener module finding a change in provisioning on said data communications client and alerting said native host applications.
24. The method of claim 16 , wherein the storing variant configuration information at first data store step further stores information to control application functionality of the data communications client.
25. The method of claim 24 , further comprising the step of setting a change service flag at the first data store.