Method and apparatus for enterprise brokering of user-controlled availability

摘要

Methods and apparatus are provided for controlling an availability of a user in an enterprise environment. If an enterprise user requests to change an availability status on one or more media, a determination is made as to whether to grant the request based on one or more predefined criteria associated with the enterprise. For example, the predefined criteria may comprise resource needs or one or more policies of the enterprise. The predefined criteria may be expressed as one or more rules in a rule base.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
receiving a request from an enterprise user to change a user-controlled availability status of the enterprise user for a communication in an enterprise communication environment; routing the request to a request queue at an enterprise associated with the enterprise communication environment; identifying an enterprise rule and a resource need for processing queued requests, wherein the enterprise rule comprises a priority of the resource need with respect to user-controlled availability, and wherein the resource need is quantified based on enterprise resource data to yield a resource need value, the enterprise resource data being based on a variety of sources in the enterprise, and the resource need comprising one of a workload, an enterprise service demand, an expertise requirement, and a user demand; and brokering the change to the user-controlled availability status based on the request, the policy, and the resource need value to yield a brokered response to the request from the enterprise user.