UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS BRIDGING ARCHITECTURE

1 . An apparatus for bridging communications between unified communications (UC) clients, the apparatus comprising:

a UC client driver module comprising a set of UC client drivers configured to translate UC client specific human interface device (HID) commands to a common format; and

a UC audio assistant module configured to receive the HID commands in the common format and translate the HID commands from the common format into a device specific format; and

a device specific driver module comprising a set of device specific drivers configured to pass the HID commands in the device specific format to an output device.

2 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the UC audio assistant module is further configured to perform a mix-minus methodology on a UC client audio stream.

3 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the set of UC client drivers comprise virtual audio device drivers.

4 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the set of UC client drivers is configured to translate UC client specific human interface device (HID) commands from a plurality of types of UC clients.

5 . A method for bridging communications between unified communications (UC) clients, the method comprising:

receiving a set of HID commands from a UC client;

translating the set of HID commands to a common format;

translating the set of HID commands from the common format to an output device specific format;

passing the set of HID commands in the output device specific format to a corresponding output device driver.