Notification of contact status of remote user

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10181052-B2
Application number	US-201314367992-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 19, 2013
Priority date	Dec 19, 2013
Publication date	Jan 15, 2019
Grant date	Jan 15, 2019

Abstract

Technologies for informing a remote user of a local user's availability to receive a contact on a communication device are disclosed. The availability of the local user may be determined based on the local user's context information, which may be reported to the remote user in response to a contact status request. The local user's context information provided to the remote user may inform, for example, whether the local user is available to receive a contact, the best way to contact the local user, and/or other context information of the local user. The type and/or level of specificity of the local user's context information reported to the remote user may be determined based on a privacy level, which may be determined based on the local user's context, the identity of the remote user, and/or other criteria. In some embodiments, contact status updates may be provided to the remote user.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A communication device for responding to a contact status request, the communication device comprising:
a processor; and
a memory that comprises instructions stored thereon, which when executed by the processor, causes the communication device to:
receive a contact status request from a remote communication device;
determine a context of a user of the communication device based on at least one of (i) data generated by one or more context sensors of the communication device, (ii) data retrieved from other context sources, or (iii) inference on additional information;
determine whether generating a contact status report to the contact status request is authorized, wherein the contact status report includes context information of the user; identify, in response to a determination that generating the contact status report is authorized, a privacy level of a plurality of predefined privacy levels based on an identification of a user of the remote communication device that sent the contact status request, wherein each privacy level is associated with a level of specificity of the context of the user of the communication device;
determine context information based on the determined context and the level of specificity defined by the identified privacy level;
generate a contact status report including the context information and a preferred communication modality to receive a contact from the remote communication device; and
transmit the contact status report to the remote communication device in response to the contact status request;
wherein the contact status report further includes a predicted or estimated future time at which the user of the communication device is available to receive a contact from the user of the remote communication device.

2. The communication device of claim 1 , wherein the memory further comprises instructions stored thereon, which when executed by the processor, causes the communication device to:
determine whether an update condition is satisfied; and
update the remote communication device with an updated contact status report in response to a determination that the update condition is satisfied.

3. The communication device of claim 2 , wherein to determine whether the update condition is satisfied comprises to determine at least one of (i) whether a reference amount of time has lapsed since the transmittal of the contact status report and (ii) whether a subsequent contact status request has been received from the remote communication device.

4. The communication device of claim 2 , wherein to update the remote communication device comprises to:
determine an updated context of the user of the communication device; and
determine the updated contact status report based on the updated context of the user and the identified privacy level.

5. The communication device of claim 1 , wherein to identify a privacy level based on the identification of the user of the remote communication device comprises to:
communicate with a remote server to retrieve data indicative of the identity of the user of the remote communication device, and
identify a privacy level based on the retrieved data.

6. The communication device of claim 1 , wherein to identify the privacy level comprises to identify a privacy level based on the contact status request and the determined context of the user.

7. The communication device of claim 1 , wherein the communication device comprises a context policy database, and wherein to determine the context information comprises to retrieve context information from the context policy database based on the determined context of the user and the identified privacy level.

8. One or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media comprising a plurality of instructions stored thereon that, in response to execution by a communication device, cause the communication device to:
receive a contact status request from a remote communication device;
determine a context of a user of the communication device based on at least one of (i) data generated by one or more context sensors of the communication device, (ii) data retrieved from other context sources, or (iii) inference on additional information;
determine whether generating a contact status report to the contact status request is authorized, wherein the contact status report includes context information of the user;
identify, in response to a determination that generating the contact status report is authorized, a privacy level of a plurality of predefined privacy levels based on an identification of a user of the remote communication device that sent the contact status request, wherein each privacy level is associated with a level of specificity of the context of the user;
determine context information based on the determined context of the user of the communication device and the level of specificity defined by the identified privacy level;
generate a contact status report in response to the contact status request, the contact status report including the context information and a preferred communication modality to receive a contact from the remote communication device; and
respond to the contact status request with the contact status report;
wherein the contact status report further includes a predicted or estimated future time at which the user of the communication device is available to receive a contact from the user of the remote communication device.

9. The one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media of claim 8 , wherein the plurality of instructions, in response to execution, further cause the communication device to:
determine whether an update condition is satisfied; and
update the remote communication device with an updated contact status report in response to the update condition being satisfied.

10. The one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media of claim 9 , wherein to determine whether the update condition is satisfied comprises to determine at least one of (i) whether a reference amount of time has lapsed since the transmittal of the contact status report and (ii) whether a subsequent contact status request has been received from the remote communication device.

11. The one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media of claim 9 , wherein to update the remote communication device comprises to:
determine an updated context of the user of the local communication device; and
determine the updated contact status report based on the updated context of the user and the identified privacy level.

12. The one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media of claim 8 , wherein to identify a privacy level based on the identification of the user of the remote communication device comprises to:
communicate with a remote server to retrieve data indicative of the identity of the user of the remote communication device, and
identify a privacy level based on the retrieved data.

13. The one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media of claim 8 , wherein to identify a privacy level comprises to identify a privacy level based on the contact status request and the determined context of the user.

14. The one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media of claim 8 , wherein to determine the context information comprises to retrieve context information from a context policy database based on the determined context of the user and the identified privacy level.

15. A method for responding to a contact status request, the method comprising:
receiving, by a local communication device, a contact status request from a remote commun

Assignees

• Intel Corp

Inventors

• Li Hong
• Garg Sharad K
• Yarvis Mark D
• Boelter Joshua

Classifications

• H04L51/32

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G06F21/6263 Primary

  during internet communication, e.g. revealing personal data from cookies · CPC title

• G06Q10/107 Primary

  Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing] · CPC title

• G06Q10/06

  Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling · CPC title

• H04L51/52

  for supporting social networking services · CPC title