JP7639400B2 - Telephone System - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to email processing technology for exchanging emails between telephone terminals in a telephone system.

Conventionally, for telephone systems such as business phone systems and PBX systems that switch-connect multiple telephone terminals to a telephone network, email processing technology has been proposed that provides users with value-added telephone services by linking with email systems (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
In this type of email control technology, the telephone system periodically accesses the email server based on the user's pre-configured email account, and when new email for that user is stored in the email server, the user's telephone terminal is configured to notify the user of the arrival of new email and the number of new emails.

Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 5-241556

According to the method of notifying the arrival of new e-mail using the indicator lamp on the telephone terminal, as in the conventional technology described above, the user can immediately check on the telephone terminal that new e-mail has arrived, without having to access the mail server to check the received e-mail. However, when sending an e-mail, the user still needs to launch a mailer on a PC or smartphone separate from the telephone terminal 10, as in the past, and, for example, create a relay e-mail indicating the contents of the call relay or forward an e-mail that the user wants to share, which causes the problem that the workload of creating and forwarding e-mails is not reduced.

The present invention is intended to solve these problems, and aims to provide email processing technology that allows users to easily create and forward emails with minimal workload.

In order to achieve this object, the telephone system of the present invention comprises a gateway connected to an IP network, and a telephone terminal connected to the gateway via a communication line for establishing a voice call via the IP network, the gateway having a mailbox for storing emails exchanged between the telephone terminals, the telephone terminal transmitting emails addressed to a designated destination user, including telephone forwarding content registered in advance as a standard phrase, to the gateway in response to a user's operation for sending forwarded email, and the gateway storing specific received emails, filtered in accordance with a preset importance level of the email, in the mailbox corresponding to the destination user.

In one example of the configuration of the telephone system according to the present invention, the telephone terminal is configured to display the arrival status of new mail addressed to the user of the terminal in the mailbox of the gateway with an indicator lamp, and to display or output audibly the contents of the new mail obtained from the gateway in response to the operation of the mail confirmation key while the arrival of the new mail is being displayed.

In addition, one configuration example of the above telephone system according to the present invention further includes a telephone control device that is connected to the gateway and the telephone terminal via the communication line and establishes a voice call via the IP network by the telephone terminal by controlling the call of the telephone terminal, and the telephone control device is configured to instruct the display lamp of the telephone terminal to display the arrival status of the new mail obtained from the gateway, and to notify the telephone terminal of the contents of the new mail obtained from the gateway in response to the operation of the mail confirmation key on the telephone terminal.

In order to achieve this object, the telephone system of the present invention comprises a gateway connected to an IP network, a telephone terminal connected to the gateway via a communication line and establishing a voice call via the IP network, and a telephone control device connected to the gateway and the telephone terminal via the communication line and controlling the telephone terminal to establish a voice call via the IP network by the telephone terminal, wherein the gateway has a mailbox for storing emails exchanged between the telephone terminals, and the telephone control device sends emails addressed to a specified destination user, including telephone transfer content registered in advance as a standard message, in response to a user's operation to send a forwarded email on the telephone terminal, and the gateway is configured to store specific received emails, filtered according to a preset importance level of the email, in the mailbox corresponding to the destination user.

According to the present invention, it is possible to easily view the contents of new emails whose arrival has been notified to a telephone terminal with minimal work burden.

1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a telephone system according to a first embodiment; FIG. 4 is a sequence diagram showing an email processing operation of the telephone system according to the first embodiment; FIG. 11 is a sequence diagram showing an email processing operation of the telephone system according to the second embodiment. FIG. 13 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a telephone system according to a third embodiment. FIG. 13 is a sequence diagram showing an email processing operation of the telephone system according to the third embodiment. FIG. 13 is a sequence diagram showing another example of the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the third embodiment.

Next, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.
[First embodiment]
First, a telephone system 1 according to a first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to Fig. 1. Fig. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the telephone system according to the first embodiment.
This telephone system 1 is composed of telephone systems such as a business phone system and a PBX system as a whole, and provides various telephone services to users by switching and connecting multiple telephone terminals 10 to an IP network (IP telephone network) NW such as the Internet via a gateway 30.

[Telephone System]
As shown in FIG. 1, the telephone system 1 according to the present embodiment mainly comprises a plurality of telephone terminals 10 and a gateway 30.

[gateway]
The gateway 30 is generally a VoIP gateway, and is configured to connect to the IP network NW via a communication line L2 and relay the telephone terminal 10 connected via the communication line L1 to the IP network NW.
The gateway 30 is also configured to periodically access a mail server 40 connected to the IP network NW based on a preset mail account of the user of each telephone terminal 10, automatically receive e-mail addressed to each user, and store the e-mail in a mailbox corresponding to the user. The gateway 30 is also configured to store e-mails exchanged between the telephone terminals 10 in the mailbox.

At this time, the gateway 30 may set a filter in advance for the emails to be saved according to the importance of the email, and save only specific emails that pass through the filter among those addressed to the user. This makes it possible to narrow down the new emails notified to the telephone terminal 10 to only those with high importance, reducing the burden on the user for checking emails and saving memory resources of the gateway 30. The filter according to the importance of the email may be set in advance to filter new emails according to, for example, the sender address, the subject of the email, or specific keywords contained in the body of the email.

[Telephone terminal]
The telephone terminal 10 is composed of an IP telephone terminal as a whole, and is configured to establish a voice call via the IP network NW based on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology by exchanging call control messages with a call control server 50 connected to the IP network NW via a gateway 30.
The telephone terminal 10 is also configured to periodically access the gateway 30, refer to a mailbox corresponding to the user of the terminal that has been preset, and check for the arrival of new e-mails. At this time, a general e-mail protocol such as IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) may be used to refer to the mailbox.

As shown in FIG. 1, the telephone terminal 10 is equipped with an indicator lamp 12 consisting of a display element such as an LED, an email confirmation key 11, and a screen display unit 13 consisting of a screen display device such as an LCD, and is configured to notify the user of the arrival status of new emails by controlling the display state of the indicator lamp 12, to obtain new emails from the gateway 30 in response to pressing the email confirmation key 11 while the arrival is being displayed, and to display the contents of the new email on the screen display unit 13, or to convert the contents of the new email into sound and output it through the handset or speaker.

Therefore, the user can check the new emails that have been notified of their arrival on the telephone terminal 10 with the extremely simple operation of pressing the email confirmation key 11. In addition, in a typical telephone terminal 10, the line keys used for making and receiving calls are provided with line lamps, and the display lamp 12 and the email confirmation key 11 may be configured with these line lamps and line keys. In addition, the email confirmation key 11 and the display lamp 12 may be configured with function keys to which pre-prepared functions can be assigned and display lamps provided on those function keys.

As a result, when the indicator lamps 12 and mail confirmation key 11 are configured using these line lamps and line keys, a common line lamp and line key can be used as an interface with the user for receiving and responding to voice calls, and for receiving and checking the contents of new mail. This allows the user to use services related to the arrival and checking the contents of new mail without feeling out of place. Also, there is no need to add new indicator lamps or operation keys for receiving and checking the contents of new mail, and it can be introduced to existing telephone terminals with just a software change.

The telephone terminal 10 is also configured to store, in the mailbox of the gateway 30, an email addressed to the designated destination user, including the contents of the call transfer that have been registered in advance as a standard message, in response to the user's operation to send the transfer email. For example, when the user answers an incoming call from the IP network NW and then transfers the call to a person in charge, the person in charge may not be available and cannot transfer the call. In such a case, the caller is notified that the person in charge is unavailable, the call is ended, and then a transfer email sending operation is performed, whereby a transfer email indicating the series of contents of the call transfer is automatically generated and sent to the designated destination user via the gateway 30.

In this case, the relayed email is automatically generated using a pre-registered fixed phrase, such as "Please call back Mr./Ms. XX (090-aaaa-bbbb)." The name and telephone number of the call-back recipient and the email address of the person in charge of the relayed email may be manually entered by the user when sending the relayed email, or may be configured to be specified by referring to a pre-registered phone book.

For the relay mail sending operation, a separate operation key may be provided, or existing operation keys of the telephone terminal 10 may be used. For example, the previously mentioned existing function keys or line keys may be used as relay mail sending operation keys. In particular, if a user is assigned to these function keys or line keys, that user may be used as the relay destination. This eliminates the need for the user to specify the relay destination.

[Operation of the First Embodiment]
Next, the operation of the telephone system 1 according to the present embodiment will be described with reference to Fig. 2. Fig. 2 is a sequence diagram showing the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the first embodiment. Here, the case where a relayed mail is sent from the telephone terminal 10A to the telephone terminal 10B will be described as an example.

2, for example, when the user answers an incoming call from the IP network NW (step S100), the telephone terminal 10A may not be able to transfer the call to a person in charge because the person in charge is not available. In such a case, the user notifies the calling party that the person in charge is not available and ends the call (step S101), and then performs a transfer mail transmission operation (step S102).
As a result, a relay mail is automatically generated by the telephone terminal 10A (step S103), transmitted to the gateway 30 (step S104), and stored in a mailbox corresponding to the person in charge of the gateway 30 (step S105).

The telephone terminal 10A automatically generates a relayed email using a fixed phrase in response to the user's operation to send a relayed email. In this case, the relayed email is automatically generated using a fixed phrase that is registered in advance, for example, "Please call back Mr./Ms. XX (090-aaaa-bbbb)." The name and phone number of the callback destination may be input by the user when sending the relayed email, or may be specified by referring to a pre-registered phone book.

Thereafter, when the time for checking mail arrives at time T2, telephone terminal 10B notifies gateway 30 of a mail checking request for the mailbox corresponding to the user of the terminal, which has been preset (step S110).
In response to the mail confirmation request from telephone terminal 10B, gateway 30 checks for new mail in the designated mailbox, and if new mail has arrived, returns a mail confirmation response indicating that new mail has arrived (step S111).

When the telephone terminal 10B receives a mail confirmation response from the gateway 30 indicating that new mail has arrived, the telephone terminal 10B notifies the user of the arrival of new mail by, for example, flashing the display lamp 12 (step S112).
When the user confirms that new email has arrived and presses the email confirmation key 11 on the telephone terminal 10 (step S113), the telephone terminal 10 notifies the gateway 30 of a request to retrieve email for the corresponding mailbox (step S114).

In response to the mail retrieval request from the telephone terminal 10, the gateway 30 retrieves the new mail from the designated mailbox and returns a mail retrieval response including the new mail (step S115).
The telephone terminal 10 extracts the new mail from the mail retrieval response returned from the gateway 30, and displays the contents of the new mail on the screen display unit 13, or converts the contents of the new mail into audio and outputs it through the handset or speaker (step S116).

[Advantages of the First Embodiment]
In this manner, in this embodiment, the gateway 30 has a mailbox for storing emails exchanged between the telephone terminals 10, and the telephone terminal 10 is configured to store emails addressed to the designated forwarding user, including telephone forwarding content that has been registered in advance as a standard phrase, in the mailbox of the gateway 30 in response to the user's operation to send forwarded email.
As a result, a relayed email is automatically generated and sent to the designated relay destination user through a very simple operation of sending a relayed email. This eliminates the need to create and send a relayed email by starting a mailer on a PC or smartphone other than the telephone terminal 10, and allows relayed emails to be easily created with little work load, significantly reducing the work load required for telephone relay work.

Furthermore, in this embodiment, the telephone terminal 10 may be configured to display the arrival status of new emails addressed to the user of the terminal in the mailbox of the gateway 30 using the display lamp 12, and to obtain the new email from the gateway 30 and display or output it as audio in response to the operation of the email confirmation key 11 while the arrival of the new email is being displayed.
Thus, when the user operates the mail confirmation key 11 while the display lamp 12 on the telephone terminal 10 indicates that there is new mail, the contents of the new mail are displayed or audibly output on the operated telephone terminal 10.

Therefore, the user does not need to start a mailer on a PC or smartphone other than the telephone terminal 10 on which the message "New mail has arrived" is displayed, access the gateway 30, search for the new mail, and check its contents.
By a very simple operation of pressing the mail confirmation key 11 on the telephone terminal 10 where the message "New mail has arrived" is displayed, the user can check the notified new mail on the telephone terminal 10. Therefore, the user can easily view the contents of the notified new mail with a very small workload.

Although the mail protocol used varies depending on the mail server 40, the well-known automatic mail retrieval function that is generally provided in the gateway 30 can accommodate various protocols. Therefore, by utilizing such an automatic mail retrieval function of the gateway 30, the telephone terminal 10 does not need to accommodate these differences in protocols, making it possible to simplify the software of the telephone terminal 10.

In addition, because the telephone terminal 10 periodically checks whether new emails have arrived at the gateway 30, the present invention can be realized even if the gateway 30 uses a common email protocol. Note that if the gateway 30 uses an email protocol such as IMAP that notifies the arrival of new emails one by one via push notification, for example, step S110 in FIG. 2 can be omitted, and the processing load on the telephone terminal 10 can be reduced.

[Second embodiment]
Next, a telephone system 1 according to a second embodiment of the present invention will be described.
2, an example has been described in which relayed e-mails are exchanged between telephone terminals 10. In the present embodiment, an example will be described in which a viewed e-mail is forwarded to another telephone terminal 10.

In this embodiment, the telephone terminal 10 is configured to display the arrival status of new mail addressed to the user of the terminal in the mailbox of the gateway 30 using the indicator lamp 12, and in response to the operation of the mail confirmation key 11 while the arrival of the new mail is being displayed, to obtain the new mail from the gateway 30 and display or output the mail as sound, and in response to the mail forwarding operation during the display or sound output, to save the forwarded mail addressed to the specified recipient, including the contents entered by the user, in the mailbox of the gateway 30.

The mail forwarding operation may be realized by operating the mail confirmation key 11. The mail confirmation key 11 is used when retrieving and displaying new mail, but this operation is performed when no mail is being displayed, not when mail is being displayed. Therefore, if the mail confirmation key 11 is operated while a mail is being displayed, it can be determined that this is a mail forwarding operation. This eliminates the need to add a new operation key to the telephone terminal 10, and the present embodiment can be implemented in an existing telephone terminal simply by modifying the software.
Other configurations of the present embodiment are similar to those of the first embodiment, and detailed description thereof will be omitted here.

[Operation of the second embodiment]
Next, the operation of the telephone system 1 according to the present embodiment will be described with reference to Fig. 3. Fig. 3 is a sequence diagram showing the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the second embodiment. Here, the case where a forwarded mail is sent from the telephone terminal 10A to the telephone terminal 10B will be described as an example.

As shown in FIG. 3, when the telephone terminal 10A is displaying or outputting audibly, for example, an email retrieved from the gateway 30 (step S200), if the user performs an email forwarding operation (step S201), the telephone terminal 10A obtains the forwarding destination of the displayed email in response to the user's forwarding destination input operation (step S202), automatically generates a forwarded email addressed to the forwarding destination that includes the contents of the displayed email (step S203), and sends it to the gateway 30 (step S204).

The gateway 30 receives the forwarded mail from the telephone terminal 10A and stores it in a mailbox corresponding to the forwarding destination (step S205).
As a result, steps S100 to S118 described above with reference to FIG. 2 are executed, and the forwarded mail is displayed or audibly output at the telephone terminal 10B that is the forwarding destination.

[Advantages of the second embodiment]
In this manner, in this embodiment, the telephone terminal 10 displays the arrival status of new mail addressed to the user of the terminal in the mailbox of the gateway 30 using the indicator lamp 12, and in response to the operation of the mail confirmation key 11 while the arrival of the new mail is being displayed, the new mail is obtained from the gateway 30 and displayed or output as audio, and in response to the mail sending operation during the display or audio output, the mail addressed to the specified recipient, including the content entered by the user, is saved in the mailbox of the gateway 30.

As a result, with the extremely simple operation of forwarding an email while it is being displayed, a forwarded email containing the contents of the displayed email is automatically generated and sent to the designated forwarding user. This eliminates the need to launch a mailer on a PC or smartphone other than the telephone terminal 10 to create and send a relay email, and emails can be easily forwarded with little work, significantly reducing the workload required for email forwarding operations.

[Third embodiment]
Next, a telephone system 1 according to a third embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to Fig. 4. Fig. 4 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the telephone system according to the second embodiment.

In FIG. 1, a case has been described in which a call control server 50 connected to an IP network NW performs call control for each telephone terminal 10 via the IP network NW and a gateway 30, but this is not limited to this example. In this embodiment, a configuration will be described in which a telephone control device 20 is provided in the telephone system 1, and the call control for each telephone terminal 10 is performed by the telephone control device 20.

[Telephone Control Device]
The telephone control device 20 is composed of a server device that performs call control as a whole, and is configured to exchange call control messages with the IP network NW via the gateway 30 based on a call control protocol such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and to exchange call control messages with the telephone terminals 10 via the communication line L1, thereby switching and connecting each telephone terminal 10 to the IP network NW.

In this embodiment, the telephone control device 20 is configured to periodically access the gateway 30 via the communication line L1 and perform mail processing operations between the gateway 30. Therefore, even if the telephone terminal 10B is not an IP telephone terminal but a dedicated internal telephone terminal (button telephone), the mail processing operations of the first embodiment described above can be executed in the same manner in this embodiment, and similar effects can be obtained.

Figure 5 is a sequence diagram showing the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the second embodiment. In this embodiment, since the telephone control device 20 is provided, the mail confirmation and mail acquisition process between the gateway 30 in Figure 2 is executed between the telephone control device 20 and the gateway 30 (steps S310, S311, S316, S317), the display lamp of the telephone terminal 10 blinks based on the instruction of the telephone control device 20, and the contents of the new mail notified by the telephone control device 20 are displayed on the telephone terminal 10 (steps S312, S313, S314, S315, S318, S319).

Figure 6 is a sequence diagram showing another example of the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the third embodiment. In the sequence of Figure 5, telephone terminal 10A creates a relayed mail in response to a relayed mail sending operation and sends it to gateway 30, but as shown in Figure 6, the telephone control device 20 may be configured to create a relayed mail and send it to gateway 30 in response to a relayed mail sending operation of telephone terminal 10A, for example, pressing an operation key. As a result, even if telephone terminal 10A is not an IP telephone terminal but a dedicated internal telephone terminal (button telephone), the mail processing operation of the first embodiment described above can be executed in the same way in this embodiment.

[Extended embodiments]
Although the present invention has been described above with reference to the embodiments, the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiments. Various modifications that can be understood by those skilled in the art can be made to the configuration and details of the present invention within the scope of the present invention. In addition, the respective embodiments can be implemented in any combination within a range that does not contradict each other.

1...telephone system, 10...telephone terminal, 11...email confirmation key, 12...indicator lamp, 13...screen display unit, 20...telephone control device, 30...gateway, 40...mail server, 50...call control server, NW...IP network, L1, L2...communication lines.

Claims (4)

A gateway connected to an IP network;
a telephone terminal connected to the gateway via a communication line and configured to establish a voice call via the IP network;
the gateway has a mailbox for storing emails exchanged between the telephone terminals;
The telephone terminal sends an email addressed to the designated destination user, including a telephone transfer content registered as a standard message in advance, to the gateway in response to the user's operation to send a transferred email, and the gateway stores specific received emails, filtered according to a preset importance level of the email, in the mailbox corresponding to the destination user. 2. The telephone system of claim 1,
The telephone terminal displays the arrival status of new emails addressed to the user of the terminal in the mailbox of the gateway with an indicator lamp, and displays or outputs audibly the contents of the new emails obtained from the gateway in response to the operation of an email confirmation key while the arrival of the new emails is being displayed. 3. The telephone system of claim 2,
a telephone control device that is connected to the gateway and the telephone terminal via the communication line and that establishes a voice call via the IP network by the telephone terminal by performing call control of the telephone terminal;
The telephone control device instructs the telephone terminal to display the arrival status of the new email received from the gateway on the display lamp, and notifies the telephone terminal of the contents of the new email received from the gateway in response to operation of the email confirmation key on the telephone terminal. A gateway connected to an IP network;
a telephone terminal connected to the gateway via a communication line and configured to establish a voice call via the IP network;
a telephone control device that is connected to the gateway and the telephone terminal via the communication line and that establishes a voice call via the IP network by the telephone terminal by performing call control of the telephone terminal;
the gateway has a mailbox for storing emails exchanged between the telephone terminals;
The telephone control device sends an email to a designated destination user, including telephone relay content that has been registered as a standard message in advance, in response to a user's operation to send a relayed email on the telephone terminal, and the gateway stores specific received emails, filtered according to a preset importance level of the email, in the mailbox corresponding to the destination user.

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