Contact management

Abstract

Contacts are created and stored with corresponding contact information in such a way that they can be accessed and utilized by applications from a single contact store. The contact store contains a complete contact definition for each contact so that each of the applications can obtain the appropriate contact information and in the appropriate format from the contact store that is required by the applications. Centralizing the storage of the contact information allows the contact store to incorporate and propagate the changes that are made by the applications to the contact information. Interfaces can also be provided to initiate communications using the contact information and for controlling what contact information will be made accessible to the applications.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to a contact management system for controlling how to store contact information and how to make one or more applications obtain the contact information. Background technique [0002] A contact management system is generally referred to in this application as containing contact information about a person, group, organization, business establishment, family, or any other identifiable entity (each of which is referred to herein as a "contact") system, catalog or database. [0003] As the computer industry continues to evolve, new and efficient means for communicating with contacts are becoming a reality. For example, it is now common for people to use their personal computers to communicate via email, fax, instant messaging (IM), telephony, video teleconferencing (VTC), and the like. This growth in enabling communication through computerized devices has greatly increased the need for applications for storing contact informa...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0007] Another problem with dedicated application directories: they are usually designed to only store a limited amount of information

[0014] However, these various directories and corresponding storage capabilities can vary from one application to the next, increasing the difficulty for the user to know which contact information can be copied in each of these different directories

Furthermore, even though portions of the contact information could be redundantly stored in each of these different contact directories, such redundant storage would represent an undesirable, unnecessary expenditure of computing resources

[0015] Another problem with "storing contact information redundantly within existing contact directories" is that it can be difficult to propagate knowledge of the contact information throughout all the individual contact directories that are storing the modified contact information. Change

[0016] Another problem with existing contact management systems is that because they are so specialized, they do not provide very broad, rich search and viewing capabilities for that contact information

Another problem with existing contact management systems is that they do not allow users to view, create and edit relationships between contacts

More specifically, existing systems do not allow users to view these relationships that exist between contacts, or to create and edit these relationships

Images