Automated entry to a scheduled conference call

摘要

Scheduling an event to automatically join a user to a conference call is disclosed. In one aspect, the method includes receiving an invitation for a user to join a conference call 402, extracting from the invitation a scheduled conference call time, conference call address information (e.g. telephone number or IP address etc.), conference call authentication information (e.g. password, pass code, PIN etc.), and a conference call modality 404, and scheduling an event to join the user to the conference call via the conference call modality at the scheduled conference call time based on the extracted conference call address information and the conference call authentication information 406. In another aspect (Figure 5), the system retrieves a scheduled event at a scheduled time by monitoring a user's calendar/database, extracts the address, authentication, and modality information for the conference, and joins the user to the conference automatically at the scheduled time, with little or no user interaction required. The information may be extracted from the conference call invitation message (Figure 2) using extraction techniques such as template based extraction or algorithmic extraction such as fuzzy logic, machine learning or regular expression algorithms. Additionally the method may also involve identifying a resource (e.g. document, spreadsheet, image, attachment etc.) related to the conference call and scheduling the event to open the associated resource at the time the user joins the conference call. The overall method is aimed at saving manual entry for the user to join a conference call and to save manually finding and opening associated resources in preparation for the conference call.