DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1-3, 5, 8-10, 12, 15-17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as anticipated by or, in the alternative, under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over Shtiegman (and if necessarily) in view of Kotelba (US 2008/0057937), Berner et al (US 2007/0133780) OR Uba et al (US 2015/0006947).
Claims 1, 8 and 15. Shtiegman teaches a method, a non-transitory computer readable medium and a system comprising:
obtaining, by an on-premises telephony node of a premises where telephony services are accessed and from a telephony server, stored data associated with a network-based telephony service, (storage of call forwarding rules according to the user's presence document certain embodiments of such rules. Col. 4, line 64 – col. 5, line 8), the network-based telephony service including at least [[one of an automated receptionist service, a call queue service, or]] a shared line group service (Some embodiments of the system may provide: the ability to easily configure call forwarding from the Communicator's main UX; an easy to understand advanced options page for configuring Team ringing and using a group of people defined in a contact list as a team; the ability to call team and other people (team ringing) when the user's phone rings directly, simultaneously, rings the user first and then team members, and/or rings one team member randomly ahead; col. 4, lines 43-51);
receiving, by the on-premises telephony node, an indication (may provide indications to the user of the state of the call forwarding features, col. 6, lines 58-59) that the telephony server is unable to provide the network-based telephony service (incoming call to the original recipient (col. 1, lines 34-35 and being not accepted col. 1 lines 47-50, [[due to an outage of at least one of the telephone server or a network connection between the on-premises telephone node and the telephone server = X1]]; and
providing, by the on-premises telephony node and in response to the indication, the network-based telephony service based on the stored data. (If the user communication device is not accepting incoming calls, the system forwards the incoming call according to at least one forwarding instruction. The forwarding instruction includes information identifying at least one group having more than one member, wherein the incoming call is forwarded to at least two members of the group, col. 1, lines 47-54).
X1: Shtiegman teaches, “the Live Server in the "Missed Call Notification" scenario may have the following requirements. Live Server Inbound Routing may establish a long lasting SIP connection directly with Exchange for the exchange of "Missed Call Notification" information. Live Server Inbound Routing may reestablish this session if for any reason the session has been disconnected, col. 47, lines 33-39.
For the reason of BRI (Broadest Reasonable Interpretation), Shtiegman’s selected passage suggests or alternatively by obviousness that there could have been a network problem (i.e., outage) which caused the communication session to be disconnected.
To support this obviousness,
Kotelba teaches, “Factors that affect voice quality in a VoIP network are fairly well understood. The level of control over these factors will vary from network to network. This is highlighted by the differences between a well-managed private enterprise network versus an unmanaged network such as the Internet. Network operational issues affect network performance and will create conditions that affect voice quality. These issues include outages/failures of network switches, routers, and bridges; outages/failure of VoIP elements such as call servers and gateways; [0011].
Berner teaches, “The ISAAC server then uses the IVR interface, the IPTV interface, or the eCare online interface to query the user as to which service they are contacting the call center about and the ISAAC server determines whether there is a current network outage affecting that service (block 606). The ISAAC server may record information about the services associated with the customer for later access by a call center agent. The ISAAC server then provides self-help support via the IVR interface, the IPTV interface (block 608). Then the ISAAC server determines if the stored information about network equipment associated with the customer matches the actual network equipment (block 610), [0098]”, or
Uba teaches, “ In some embodiments, the disruption may be associated with an interruption in a contact center's ability to handle contacts in accordance with expected, or predefined, criteria. Examples of these disruptions may include, but are not limited to, an outage, a natural disaster, system updates, overloads, and other events that may affect contact center operations, [0008].
Therefore it would have been obvious to the ordinary artisan before the effective filing date to make a minor modification to the teaching of Shtiegman to include the teaching of Kotelba, Berner OR Uba for the purpose of identifying the cause of the outage problem and providing a recovery process and continuing to provide services.
Claims 2, 9 and 16. The method of claim 1, comprising: prompting, at a predefined interval and prior to receiving the indication, the telephony server to transmit updates to the stored data to the on-premises telephony node; and receiving, by the telephony node, the updates to the stored data. (Selecting Do Not Apply Call turns off all rules, including call forwarding or ringing. Note that the user's unanswered calls may continue to be forwarded to the number indicated in the advanced settings. When the user selects this option, then the configuration changes may be made immediately, col. 7, lines 31-35; The system may be configured such that The From: time has to be less than the To: time. The system may be configured so as to not allow the time settings that span multiple days (i.e. the specified time range has to be within the 24 Hr interval from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM). If the user had End time set to 2:00 AM and now changes the start time to 1:00 PM, then the end time may automatically be changed to the next upper end time, which is 1:30 PM. The user can enter time in at thirty minute granularity, col. 9 line 63 – col. 10, line 4).
Claims 3, 10 and 17. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the indication that the telephony server is unable to provide the network-based telephony service comprises: receiving the indication from an administrator device of the premises. (See Fig. 3B for Microsoft Office Communicator indicating the OFF day message).
Claims 5, 12 and 19. The method of claim 1, wherein the shared line group service enables access to a telephone line from multiple computing devices associated with multiple user accounts, wherein an incoming call to a telephone number of the shared line group causes parallel or simultaneous ringing of the multiple computing devices. (See the independent claims or “(103) When the user selects a group or Distribution List for TeamCall (or GroupCall), the main UI will reflect the selection against the name of the group. A string "GroupCall Enabled" may be included after the name of the group, col. 10, lines 28-31).
Claim(s) 4, 11 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shtiegman in view of Kotelba, Berner OR Uba further in view of Gray OR Frantz.
Claims 4,11 and 18. Shtiegman teaches, “receiving the indication that the telephony server is unable to provide the network-based telephony service” but “comprises: transmitting a ping request to the telephony server; and failing to receive a ping response within a threshold time”.
Gray teaches, “method and apparatus for monitoring a computing device, where one or more ping requests are generated, where it is determined whether an echo response has not been received in response to a prespecified percentage of the one or more ping requests from a controlled computing device within a prespecified period of time, and where an error indicator is generated if an echo response has not been received in response to a prespecified percentage of the one or more ping requests from a controlled computing device within a prespecified period of time, [0015]” OR
Frantz teaches, “If either the service timer 6120 or the echo timer 6210 finds that a server fails to respond or finish responding to a request within a reasonable amount of time, typically within a few seconds or a small multiple of the average response time for that server or that service request, then it excludes that measurement from the statistics and issues a warning 6310 to website administrators that the server is not responding as quickly as expected, [0119]”.
Therefore it would have been obvious to the ordinary artisan before the effective filing date to incorporate the teaching of Gray or Frantz into the teaching of Shtiegman for the purpose of utilizing the ping/echo invitation/response protocol for timely determination of connection and proper subsequential action (i.e., notification/indication) to be taken to improve the communication.
Claim(s) 6-7, 13-14 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as anticipated by or, in the alternative, under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over Shtiegman (and if necessarily) in view of Kotelba, Berner OR Uba and further in view of Mendiratta et al (US 20200028968).
Shtiegman does not teach:
Claims 6 and 13. (Currently Amended) The method of claim 1, wherein the network-based telephony service includes the call queue service, and wherein the call queue service enables serially routing an incoming call to multiple users according to a stored call queue data structure.
Claims 7, 14 and 20. (Currently Amended) The method of claim 1, wherein the network-based telephony service includes the automated receptionist service, and wherein the automated receptionist service enables, in response to an incoming call, playing a greeting and providing a menu for routing the incoming call to a user-selected destination.
Mendiratta teaches, “The routing attribute(s) can be any type of routing attribute that can influence how a communication session is routed in the contact center 120. For example, the routing attribute may be a location of the user communication device 101 (e.g., route to a specific device/contact center 120 based on a location of the user communication device 101A and/or who the user is), a busyness of a contact center 120 (e.g., route to a specific device based on a busyness level of the contact center 120), a call wait time in a contact center queue 122 (route to the contact center queue 122 if the wait time is below a threshold), a time of day, an agent state of a specific contact center agent 131 (e.g., if the contact center agent 131 is on break), an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system identifier, a menu identifier in the IVR system 123, an IVR menu set (e.g., a specific set of menus used by the IVR system 123), a Vector Directory Number (VDN), a language (e.g., route to an IVR system 123 based on a language setting), a dialect, a speed of the user communication device 101 (e.g., a processor speed or bandwidth capacities), a device type (e.g., mobile or non-mobile) of the user communication device 101, a screen size of the user communication device 101, a document displayed on a user communication device 101, an installed application on the user communication device 101, a running application on the user communication device 101, an agent skill, an agent skill level, a voicemail system identifier, a videomail system identifier, a contact center queue identifier, a priority level in the contact center queue 122, an move up number in the contact center queue 122 (e.g., move up six places in the contact center queue 122), a contact center pool identifier, an Instant Messaging bot identifier, a communication session bot identifier, a codec type (e.g., route to a contact center queue 122 that supports video calls if the codec type is for a video codec), a destination identifier, a media type (e.g., if the media type is voice or video, route to a specific contact center queue 122), and/or the like, 0055-0076].
It would have been obvious to the ordinary artisan before the effective filing date to incorporate the teaching of Mendiratta into the teaching of Shtiegman for the purpose of providing the solutions evolved to provide the capabilities that provide a more flexible routing framework for improving performance, achieving ease and\or reducing cost of implementation.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) filed 5/21/26 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Applicant argues, “The amendment to claim 1 further differentiates the claimed invention from Shtiegman in a fundamental architectural respect. The amended claim requires that the indication reflect an outage of at least one of the telephony server or a network connection between the on-premises
telephony node and the telephony server. This language is directed to a survivability architecture in which an on-premises telephony node is capable of detecting the failure of a cloud-based telephony server or the network connection thereto, and autonomously assuming responsibility for providing advanced network-based telephony services - including automated receptionist, call queue, and shared line group services - in place of the unavailable cloud server. Shtiegman contains no disclosure of any such architecture. Shtiegman is directed to a personal call forwarding and team ringing system that operates entirely based on user availability and user- configured forwarding preferences. The concept of a cloud telephony server outage, an on- premises survivability node, or autonomous failover from a cloud server to on-premises hardware is entirely absent from Shtiegman. Shtiegman therefore fails to disclose or suggest the amended indication limitation of claim 1, whether considered alone or in combination with any of the other cited references.
Examiner respectfully disagrees as examiner has provided addition references to addressed the applicant’s raised concerns.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHUNG-HOANG J. NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)270-1949. The examiner can normally be reached Reg. Sched. 6:00-3:00.
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/PHUNG-HOANG J NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2691
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