NOTIFICATION AND ALERT PROCESSING USING A PLURALITY OF COMMUNICATION MEDIA

摘要

A notification/alert system for sending messages and receiving acknowledgments using multiple communication media, such as phone lines for voice and data messages, RF receivers and transmitters for paging information and public and private networks for data messages, such as email messages. The notification/alert system receives a message to send to the user. The notification/alert system then selects one of a plurality of communication media that the user has predefined to receive the message and sends the message to the user. If the message is an alert message, then the system monitors data and voice information being received by the notification/alert system to detect whether an acknowledgment to the alert message is received. The acknowledgement may be received using a different communication medium than was used to send the message. Once the acknowledgement is received, the notification/alert system may initiate an action or send the acknowledgment to another system to initiate an action. In the absence of an acknowledgment, if the message is an alert message, the message may be sent by same or different communications media, until the acknowledgment is received or until the expiration time of the alert has passed.