| 摘要 |
A visitor is enabled to provision from a borrowed telephone (104) a visitor 's mailbox (116) associated with the borrowed telephone number, which may also be associated with a telephone owner's mailbox (114). This provisioning being allowed without requiring administrative mailbox provisioning privileges, su ch as ones possessed by a telephone system administrator. In one embodiment of the invention, the visitor dials a mailbox setup telephone extension and indicat es that he wants to set up a visitor's mailbox (116). The voice mail system (110) provisions the visitor's mailbox (116) and prompts the visitor for setup information, which the visitor enters and hangs up. The voice mail system (110) then activates the visitor's mailbox (116). The telephone owner's (114) and visitor's (116) mailboxes operate. concurrently. For example, while the visitor's mailbox (116) is active, a caller who wishes to leave a message may be directed to specify whether he desires to leave a message for the telephone owner or the visitor. Additionally, the message- waiting indicator is different for the two mailboxes. Once the visitor's mailbox (11 6) is deactivated, the system (110) returns to its prior operating state with respect to the telephone owner's mailbox (114), i.e. calls are no longer routed to the visitor's mailbox (116) and there is no longer a direction to chose between the two mailboxes. The visitor's mailbox (116) can be automatically deactivated eith er at a predetermined time or after a particular time period specified by the visito r. When the visitor's mailbox (116) is deactivated its contents can be forwarded to another mailbox, or force-delivered. Provisioning the visitor's mailbox (116) in thi s manner allows the visitor to receive messages while using a borrowed telephone (104 ) without having to access the telephone owner's mailbox (114), allowing the visitor and the telephone owner to retain the privacy and the security of their messages.
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