Automated participant account determination for a communication session

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9641480-B2
Application number	US-201213464801-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 4, 2012
Priority date	Feb 5, 2012
Publication date	May 2, 2017
Grant date	May 2, 2017

Abstract

A unified communication application can allow a user to communicate with contacts across multiple electronic communication services. When the user desires to send a message, the communication application can identify a set of candidate account addresses associated with several electronic communication services in response to receiving a partial identifier of an intended recipient. The communication application can present a list including the set of candidate account addresses to the user. In response to receiving a user selection of one of the candidate account addresses, the communication application can determine a sender account from which to send the message.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
within a single communication application running on a computer, wherein the single communication application is configured to communicate using a plurality of different types of electronic communications services:
receiving, at the computer, user input including a partial identifier for an intended recipient of a message to be sent by a user;
determining based at least in part on the partial identifier, a list of candidate account addresses each associated with a respective electronic communication service of the plurality of different types of electronic communication services;
presenting, by the computer, the list of candidate account addresses;
receiving, by the computer, an additional user input selecting one of the candidate account addresses as a selected account address of the intended recipient for the message, wherein the selected account address is associated with a particular type of electronic communication service of the plurality of different types of electronic communication services;
determining, by the computer without human intervention, based on the selected account address, a respective user account address from a plurality of user account addresses associated with the user, wherein the user account address is determined in accordance with a criteria that the user account address is also associated with the particular type of electronic communication service, and the plurality of user account addresses include one or more user account addresses associated with a type of communication service other than the particular type of communication service; and
sending, from the computer via the particular type of communication service, the message to the selected account address from the respective user account address.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
facilitating communications with the recipient from the computer via a different type of communication service of the plurality of different types of electronic communication services; and
presenting, by the computer, the message and the communications together in chronological order.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of different types of electronic communication services includes at least one of e-mail, instant messaging (IM), Short Message Service (SMS), or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the user account address includes:
determining, by the computer, if there are multiple user account addresses associated with the particular type of communication service;
upon determining that there are multiple user account addresses associated with the particular type of communication service, presenting the user with an option to select between the multiple user account addresses that are associated with the particular type of communication service; and
receiving, by the computer, the user account address as selected by the user for sending the message.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
identifying, by the computer, a first type of the plurality of different types of electronic communication services as being associated with the selected account address;
receiving another user input including another partial identifier for another intended recipient of the message;
searching, a database of recipient contacts to identify an additional list of candidate account addresses; and
determining a subset of the additional list of candidate account addresses, each candidate account address in the subset being associated with the first type of electronic communication service; and
presenting, by the computer, the subset of candidate account addresses from which the user can select another intended recipient for the message.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the list of candidate account addresses includes:
determining whether the partial identifier matches at least one of a first name, a last name, or an account address of one or more contacts in a database of recipient contacts,
wherein the list is presented in response to determining that the partial identifier matches at least one of the first name, the last name, or the account address, and
wherein the list includes the determined matches.

7. A method comprising:
within a single communication application running on a computer, wherein the single communication application is configured to communicate using a set of different types of electronic communications services:
receiving, at the computer, user input including a sequence of characters for a particular recipient of a communication to be sent by a user;
searching, based at least in part on the sequence of characters, a database of recipient contacts to identify a first set of candidate recipient accounts;
identifying, by the computer, the set of different types of electronic communication services to which the computer is connected;
searching, based at least in part on the sequence of characters, one or more service-specific contacts lists of the user, each service-specific contacts list being associated with one type of the electronic communication services in the set of different types of electronic communication services, to identify a second set of candidate recipient accounts;
presenting, by the computer, the first and second sets of candidate recipient accounts to the user; and
receiving, by the computer, a user input selecting a particular candidate recipient account from the first and second sets of candidate recipient accounts to send the communication, wherein the particular candidate recipient account is associated with a particular type of electronic communication service of the set of different types of electronic communication services; and
determining, by the computer without human intervention, based on the particular candidate recipient account, a respective user account address from a plurality of user account addresses associated with the user, wherein the user account address is determined in accordance with a criteria that the user account address is also associated with the particular type of electronic communication service, and the plurality of user account addresses include one or more user account addresses associated with a type of communication service other than the particular type of communication service; and
sending, from the computer via the particular type of communication service, the communication to the particular candidate recipient account from the respective user account address.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein searching, the database of recipient contacts includes searching for a match between the sequence of characters and at least a portion of a first name, a last name, or an account address for each contact in the database of recipient contacts.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the set of different types of electronic communication services includes an instant messaging service.

10. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium encoded with program instructions that, when executed, cause a processor in a computing device to execute a method for facilitating a communication session, the method comprising:
within a single communication application running on the computing device, wherein the single communication application is configured to communicate using a plurality of different types of electronic communications services:
receiving, at the computing device, a user input including a partial identifier for an intended recipient of a message to be sent by a user;
searching, based at least in part on the partial identifier, a database of recipient contacts to identify a set of candidate account addresses for a set of candidate recipients,

Assignees

• Guzman Suarez Angela J
• Westen Peter T
• Bernardo Jason A
• Filippis Pierre De
• Coffman Patrick L
• Apple Inc

Inventors

• Guzman Suarez Angela J
• Westen Peter T
• Bernardo Jason A
• Filippis Pierre De
• Coffman Patrick L

Classifications

• G06F16/90344

  by using string matching techniques · CPC title

• H04L51/28

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L51/16

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L51/22

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G06F17/30985

  Physics · mapped topic