APPARATUS AND METHODS FOR NOTIFICATION OF A PARTY IN A TELEPHONE CONFERENCE

摘要

Systems, methods, and machine-readable articles of manufacture enable private notification of a participant in a telephone conference. In representative embodiments, a system receives a telephone call intended for a first conference participant, generates an informative announcement containing information regarding the call, mixes the informative announcement with the conference audio, and privately plays the mixed audio to the first participant. In other representative embodiments, the system concurrently generates a non-informative announcement, mixes the non-informative announcement with the conference audio, and plays the second mixed audio to the other conference participant or participants. In this way, the first participant is notified of the incoming call while simultaneously listening to the conference audio, and the information regarding the call is not shared with the other conference participant or participants.

主权项

1. A telephone system, comprising:
a first computer telephony device coupled to a first telephone; a second computer telephony device coupled to a second telephone; an audio bus coupled to the first and second computer telephony devices to provide a patching framework; a first audio buffer coupled to the second computer telephony device to receive audio data generated by a conferee at the second telephone; a first announcement generator configured to generate a first announcement in response to one or more predetermined conditions; and a first mixer coupled to the first announcement generator, the first audio buffer, and the first computer telephony device to mix the first announcement and the audio data generated at the second telephone, thereby obtaining a first mixed audio stream, and providing the first mixed audio stream to the first telephone via the first computer telephony device; wherein the telephone system is configured so that the first announcement is not provided to the second telephone.