CONTROL OF EXECUTION TIME OF TIME-DEPENDENT SERVICES BY DEFINING DIFFERENT TIME ZONES FOR THE SUBSCRIBER'S LOCATION, THE EXECUTION SERVER, AND THE SERVICE SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

摘要

There are services that can be invoked by the subscribers, or triggered by a network entity, and wherein this invocation or trigger may depend on date or time of the day, namely, time-dependent services. Regarding the execution of these time-dependent services, there might be two problems with the determination of the execution time. The first problem is caused by the nature of so called "Data Layered Architectures" where the service execution servers, referred to as "Front-Ends" and the database servers storing the subscriber data, referred to as "Common Directory" are geographically spread over different time zones. As a consequence, the "Front-End" executes the service according to its own time zone rather than at the time zone where the subscriber is currently located or at home. The second problem is cause by the subscriber when he is roaming in an area located in a different time zone than his home time zone. For example a Subscriber has configured a Call Forwarding Unconditional Service with a time range everyday so that all calls received in that period of time are diverted to a voice mailbox, e.g. from 19:00 to 07.: 00 all received calls are forwarded to the voice mailbox. Let's imagine that the Subscriber moves to a visited network some time zones away from his/her original one, for example the period of time 19:00 to 07:00 in the original time zone corresponds to 14:00 to 02:00 in the new time zone. It means that the Subscriber stops receiving call at 14:00, so an important call might be diverted to voice mailbox. But also the Subscriber begins receiving calls at 02:00, when s/he is still sleeping. So the experience is a bit annoying. The problem is solved in that a Front-Ends server executing the Service might recalculate the service (execution) time with the applicable time zone. The applicable time zone is selected from the time zone where the Subscriber is located, SLTZ, the time zone of the Server executing the service, FETZ, or the time zone of the stored service date and time, SSTZ or SDTZ.