Systems and methods for customer administered calling controls

摘要

Methods and systems for customer administered calling controls in an institutional setting comprising receiving customer control information from a customer outside of an institution where the customer control information comprising one or more control mechanisms and providing a resident of the institution, through a telephone network, phone services subject to the one or more control mechanisms.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
an institutional communication system providing a customer account interface to a customer outside of an institution, wherein the customer provides funds for a customer account to pay for calls made by a resident of the institution to multiple parties associated with the customer account, the multiple parties outside of the institution, the multiple parties receiving calls at one or more telephone numbers; the customer account interface receiving customer input creating called party profiles for each of the multiple parties for the customer account, wherein each of the called party profiles is associated with a respective personal identification number (PIN) used to identify which of the multiple parties accepts a respective call from the resident; the customer account interface receiving customer input specifying party-specific limitations applied to each of the called party profiles to limit how the funds may be used by each of the multiple parties for calls from the resident, the limitations providing call length limits or spending limits for calls from the resident for the called party profiles; and the institutional communication system controlling calls from the resident to the multiple parties according to the limitations.