Telephone System

Abstract

To easily view a content of a newly arrived mail whose arrival is notified to a telephone terminal with little work load.SOLUTION: A gateway 30 receives and stores a newly arrived mail addressed to a preset user from a mail server 40 of an IP network NW, and a telephone terminal 10 displays the arrival status of the newly arrived mail from the other party by a display lamp 12 of a line key 11 corresponding to the other party when the arrival status of the newly arrived mail addressed to the user of its own terminal at the gateway 30 is displayed.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Description

[Technical field]

[0001] The present invention relates to an email processing technique for notifying a user of a newly arrived email at a telephone terminal in a telephone system. [Background technology]

[0002] Conventionally, for telephone systems such as business phone systems and PBX systems that switch and 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. [Prior art documents] [Patent documents]

[0003] [Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 5-241556 Summary of the Invention [Problem to be solved by the invention]

[0004] 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 that new e-mail has arrived on the telephone terminal without having to access the mail server to check the received e-mail. However, the contents of the new e-mail cannot be checked on the telephone terminal. Therefore, when the arrival of new e-mail is notified on the telephone terminal, the user must start a mailer on a PC or smartphone other than the telephone terminal, access the mail server, search for the new e-mail, and check its contents. This causes a problem of a heavy workload.

[0005] The present invention is made to solve such problems, and aims to provide an email processing technology that allows the contents of new email whose arrival has been notified to a telephone terminal to be easily viewed with little work burden. [Means for solving the problem]

[0006] In order to achieve the above object, a telephone system according to the present invention includes 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 receives and stores new mail addressed to a preset user from a mail server of the IP network, the telephone terminal has one or more line keys for performing operations related to making and receiving voice calls, and destinations are individually assigned to the line keys in advance, and the gateway Retrieved from When displaying the arrival status of new mail addressed to the user of the terminal, the arrival status of new mail from the other party is displayed by the indicator lamp of the line key corresponding to the other party.

[0007] The telephone system according to the present invention M is , 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 receiving and storing new e-mails addressed to a preset user from a mail server of the IP network, the telephone terminal having one or more line keys for performing operations related to making and receiving voice calls, destinations being individually assigned to the line keys in advance, and configured such that when displaying the arrival status of new e-mails addressed to the user of the terminal at the gateway, the arrival status of new e-mails from the destination is displayed by an indicator lamp of the line key corresponding to the destination,The telephone control device is further 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 call control of the telephone terminal, and the telephone control device is configured to instruct the indication 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 operation of the line key on the telephone terminal.

[0008] In addition, one example of the configuration of the above telephone system according to the present invention is configured so that, in response to the operation of the line key while the arrival of new mail is being displayed, the contents of the new mail from the other party corresponding to the line key obtained from the gateway are displayed or audibly output.

[0009] In addition, one configuration example of the above-mentioned telephone system according to the present invention is configured such that, when there is an incoming call from a caller assigned to the line key, the telephone terminal displays or outputs audibly the contents of a new email from the caller corresponding to the line key, which is obtained from the gateway, in response to the incoming call, in response to an operation to answer the incoming call, or in response to an operation of the line key while answering the incoming call and making a voice call. Effect of the Invention

[0010] According to the present invention, it becomes possible to easily view the contents of new mail whose arrival has been notified to a telephone terminal with a small workload. [Brief description of the drawings]

[0011] [Figure 1] 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a telephone system according to a first embodiment. [Diagram 2] FIG. 4 is a sequence diagram showing an email processing operation of the telephone system according to the first embodiment. [Diagram 3] FIG. 11 is a sequence diagram showing another example of the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the first embodiment. [Figure 4] FIG. 11 is a sequence diagram showing another example of the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the first embodiment. [Diagram 5] FIG. 11 is a sequence diagram showing another example of the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the first embodiment. [Figure 6] FIG. 11 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a telephone system according to a second embodiment. [Figure 7] FIG. 11 is a sequence diagram showing a mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the second embodiment. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0012] 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.

[0013] [Telephone System] As shown in FIG. 1, a telephone system 1 according to the present embodiment includes, as its main components, a plurality of telephone terminals 10 and a gateway 30.

[0014] [gateway] The gateway 30 is generally composed of a VoIP gateway, and is configured to connect to the IP network NW via a communication line L2 and to relay and connect the telephone terminal 10 connected via the communication line L1 to the IP network NW. In addition, the gateway 30 is configured to periodically access a mail server 40 connected to the IP network NW based on the mail account of the user of each telephone terminal 10 that has been preset, automatically receive e-mail addressed to each user, and store the e-mail in a mailbox corresponding to that user.

[0015] At this time, for the emails to be saved, a filter according to the importance of the email may be set in advance, and only specific emails that pass through the filter among the emails addressed to the user may be saved. This allows the new emails notified at the telephone terminal 10 to be narrowed down 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.

[0016] [Telephone terminal] The telephone terminal 10 is composed of an IP telephone terminal as a whole, and is configured to establish voice calls 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 is 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.

[0017] 1, the telephone terminal 10 is provided with one or more line keys 11 for performing operations related to making and receiving voice calls, and a screen display unit 13 consisting of a screen display device such as an LCD. The line keys 11 are provided with display lamps 12 for displaying the line status related to each incoming and outgoing call, and are individually assigned destinations (telephone numbers and email addresses) in advance. The destination telephone numbers may be extension numbers within the telephone system 1. Therefore, for example, when the telephone terminal 10 is notified of an incoming call, if a caller and a corresponding call destination are assigned, the telephone terminal 10 may be configured to display the incoming call using the indicator lamp 12 of the line key 11 corresponding to the corresponding call destination, and to respond to the incoming call and establish a voice call in response to the operation of the line key 11.

[0018] When the telephone terminal 10 displays the arrival status of new mail addressed to the user of the terminal at the gateway 30, the arrival status of the new mail from that destination is displayed by the indicator lamp 12 of the line key 11 corresponding to that destination, and in response to operation of the line key 11 while the arrival of the new mail is being displayed, the telephone terminal 10 obtains the new mail from the destination corresponding to that line key 11 from the gateway 30 and displays the contents of the new mail on the screen display unit 13, or alternatively converts the contents of the new mail into sound and outputs it from the handset or speaker.

[0019] Therefore, the user can check on the telephone terminal 10 the new mail from the destination that has been notified of its arrival, by the extremely simple operation of pressing the line key 11 to which the destination is assigned. This allows incoming and outgoing voice calls, as well as the arrival and content confirmation of new e-mails, to be realized with a common user interface consisting of line keys 11 and indicator lamps 12. This allows users to use services related to the arrival and content confirmation of new e-mails without feeling any discomfort. In addition, there is no need to add new indicator lamps or operation keys for the arrival and content confirmation of new e-mails, and the system can be introduced to existing telephone terminals simply by modifying the software.

[0020] Furthermore, when the line key 11 and the indicator lamp 12 are used for receiving and responding to voice calls, and for receiving and checking the contents of new e-mail messages, priority can be given to the receiving and responding to voice calls if these occur in parallel. For example, when there is a call from the party corresponding to the line key 11, the telephone terminal 10 displays the incoming call with the indicator lamp 12 of the line key 11, and responds to the call and establishes a voice call in response to pressing the line key 11 while the incoming call is displayed. Also, when there is no incoming call and no voice call is being made, that is, in the so-called idle state, the telephone terminal 10 displays the arrival status of new e-mail messages from the party corresponding to the line key 11 with the indicator lamp 12 of the line key 11.

[0021] At this time, the telephone terminal 10 may switch the display color of the indicator lamp 12. For example, the indicator lamp 12 may flash red when indicating an incoming call, and flash blue when indicating the arrival of a new email. This allows the user to easily see the incoming voice call and the arrival of a new email with the same indicator lamp 12.

[0022] Also, the incoming and outgoing voice calls may be linked to the arrival and confirmation of new e-mails. For example, when the telephone terminal 10 is notified of an incoming call from a caller assigned to the line key 11, the e-mail from the caller may be acquired from the gateway 30 and displayed in response to the incoming call, in response to an operation of answering the incoming call by pressing the line key 11, or in response to a voice call in response to the incoming call and pressing the line key 11. This allows the caller to talk to the caller while looking at documents received by e-mail, for example, thereby realizing more valuable voice calls.

[0023] [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. As shown in FIG. 2, when the time for checking email arrives at time T1, the gateway 30 notifies the email server 40 of an email checking request for the corresponding mailbox for each pre-defined user via the communication line L2 and the IP network NW (step S100).

[0024] In response to a mail confirmation request from the gateway 30, the mail server 40 checks for new mail in a specified mailbox, and if new mail has arrived, returns a mail confirmation response indicating that new mail has arrived (step S101). When the gateway 30 receives a mail confirmation response from the mail server 40 indicating that new mail has arrived, the gateway 30 notifies the mail server 40 of a mail acquisition request for the corresponding mailbox (step S102).

[0025] In response to the mail retrieval request from the gateway 30, the mail server 40 returns a mail retrieval response including the new mail in the specified mailbox (step S103). The gateway 30 extracts the incoming mail from the mail retrieval response returned from the mail server 40, saves it in the corresponding mailbox (step S104), and waits until the next mail check timing arrives. If the mail retrieval response returned from the mail server 40 does not include any new mail, the gateway 30 waits until the next mail check timing arrives.

[0026] Thereafter, at time T2, when an incoming call occurs, for example, in response to a message from the call control server 50 via the gateway 30 (step S110), the telephone terminal 10 checks whether the telephone number of the recipient of the incoming call (the caller) is assigned to a line key 11, and if so, indicates the incoming call by flashing the display lamp 12 of the line key 11 corresponding to the recipient, for example, in red (step S111). In response to this, if the user performs a response operation, for example, with the handset or the line key 11 (step S112), the telephone terminal 10 responds to the incoming call and starts a voice call (step S113). After this, in response to a call end operation by the user or a call end notification from the other party, the voice call is ended (step S114).

[0027] At a later time T3, the telephone terminal 10 notifies the gateway 30 of a mail confirmation request regarding a mailbox corresponding to the user of the telephone terminal 10 that has been preset (step S120). In response to the mail confirmation request from the telephone terminal 10, the 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 S121).

[0028] When the telephone terminal 10 receives a mail confirmation response from the gateway 30 indicating that new mail has arrived, the telephone terminal 10 checks whether the sender of the new mail is assigned to a line key 11, and if so, indicates the arrival of new mail by flashing the display lamp 12 of the line key 11 corresponding to that sender, for example, in blue (step S122). In response to this, when the user presses the line key 11 (step S123), the telephone terminal 10 notifies the gateway 30 of a mail retrieval request for the corresponding mailbox (step S124).

[0029] In response to the mail retrieval request from the telephone terminal 10, the gateway 30 returns a mail retrieval response including the new mail in the specified mailbox (step S125). The telephone terminal 10 extracts the new email from the email retrieval response returned from the gateway 30, and displays the contents of the new email on the screen display unit 13, or converts the contents of the new email into audio and outputs it through the handset or speaker (step S126).

[0030] As a result, when the indication lamp 12 on the telephone terminal 10 indicates that there is new mail, the user can simply operate the line key 11 to check the contents of the new mail by display or voice output on the operated telephone terminal 10. Also, incoming and outgoing voice calls, and the arrival of new mail and confirmation of its contents can be realized by a common user interface consisting of the line key 11 and the indication lamp 12.

[0031] In addition, when an incoming voice call and a response occur in parallel with the arrival of a new mail and confirmation of its contents, the incoming voice call and the response take priority. For example, if an incoming call is received from the same sender as the sender of the new mail while the contents of the new mail are being outputted aloud, the indicator lamp 12 of the corresponding line key 11 is switched from a blue flashing display indicating the arrival of a new mail to a red flashing display indicating an incoming call, and the user is notified of the incoming call by displaying an incoming call on a busy line, for example, by outputting an incoming call sound superimposed on the mail reading voice. In addition, if the user stops reading out the mail in this state, the incoming call on a busy line display can be switched back to a normal incoming call display.

[0032] [Advantages of the first embodiment] In this manner, in this embodiment, the gateway 30 receives and stores new e-mails addressed to a pre-set user from the mail server 40 of the IP network NW, and when the telephone terminal 10 displays the arrival status of new e-mails addressed to the user of the terminal itself in the gateway 30, the arrival status of new e-mails from the other party is displayed by the indicator lamp 12 of the line key 11 corresponding to the other party. Furthermore, in response to operation of the line key 11 while the arrival of the new mail is being displayed, the new mail is acquired from the gateway 30 and displayed or output as voice.

[0033] As a result, when the display lamp 12 on the telephone terminal 10 indicates that new mail has arrived, the user only needs to operate the line key 11, and the contents of the new mail will be 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 display lamp 12 indicates that new mail has arrived, access a mail server, search for the new mail, and check its contents. With the extremely simple operation of pressing the line key 11 on the telephone terminal 10 on which the display lamp 12 indicates that new mail has arrived, the user can check the new mail of which the arrival has been notified, on the telephone terminal 10. Therefore, the contents of the new mail of which the arrival has been notified on the telephone terminal 10 can be easily viewed with an extremely small workload.

[0034] Also, incoming and outgoing voice calls, as well as the arrival and content confirmation of new e-mails can be realized with a common user interface consisting of line keys 11 and indicator lamps 12. This eliminates the need to add new indicator lamps or operation keys for the arrival and content confirmation of new e-mails, and can be introduced to existing telephone terminals simply by modifying the software.

[0035] Also, although the mail protocol used differs depending on the mail server 40, the well-known automatic mail retrieval function that is generally provided in the gateway 30 can handle various protocols. Therefore, by utilizing such an automatic mail retrieval function of the gateway 30, the telephone terminal 10 does not need to handle these differences in protocols, and the software of the telephone terminal 10 can be simplified.

[0036] In addition, since 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 general email protocol. If the gateway 30 uses an email protocol such as IMAP that notifies the arrival of new emails one by one by push notification, for example, steps S100 and S120 in Fig. 2 can be omitted, and the processing load on the telephone terminal 10 can be reduced.

[0037] [Modification of the first embodiment] A modified example of the first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to Fig. 3 to Fig. 5. Fig. 3 to Fig. 5 are sequence diagrams showing another example of the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the first embodiment.

[0038] In the sequence of Fig. 2, after the voice call ends, the user checks whether there is any new mail, and if there is, the user presses the line key whose indicator lamp is flashing to check the contents of the new mail. Other timings can be used to check the contents of the new mail.

[0039] For example, as shown in Fig. 3, when there is an incoming call from a party assigned to line key 11, if the line key 11 with a flashing indicator lamp is pressed while answering the incoming call and making a voice call, an email from the party may be obtained from gateway 30 and displayed. With such a sequence, for example, it is possible to make a voice call with the party while looking at a document received by email, thereby realizing a more valuable voice call.

[0040] Also, as shown in Fig. 4, when there is an incoming call from a destination assigned to the line key 11, even if the line key 11 whose indicator lamp is flashing is not pressed, in response to the operation of answering the incoming call, the mail from the destination may be automatically obtained from the gateway 30 and displayed. Furthermore, as shown in Fig. 5, in response to the incoming call, the mail from the destination may be obtained from the gateway 30 and displayed without waiting for the operation of answering the incoming call.

[0041] [Second embodiment] Next, a telephone system 1 according to a second embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to Fig. 6. Fig. 6 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the telephone system according to the second embodiment.

[0042] 1, a case has been described as an example in which the call control server 50 connected to the IP network NW performs call control for each telephone terminal 10 via the IP network NW and the gateway 30, but the present invention is not limited to this. In this embodiment, a configuration will be described in which a telephone control device 20 is provided in the telephone system 1, and the telephone control device 20 performs call control for each telephone terminal 10.

[0043] [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.

[0044] 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 with the gateway 30. Therefore, even if the telephone terminal 10 is not an IP telephone terminal but a dedicated extension telephone terminal (button telephone), the mail processing operations of the first embodiment described above can be executed in the same way in this embodiment, and similar effects can be obtained.

[0045] Fig. 7 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 processing between the gateway 30 in Fig. 2 is executed between the telephone control device 20 and the gateway 30 (steps S220, S221, S226, S227), the display lamp of the telephone terminal 10 is blinked based on the instruction of the telephone control device 20, and the contents of the new mail notified from the telephone control device 20 are displayed on the telephone terminal 10 (steps S222, S223, S224, S225, S228, S229). Although not shown in Fig. 7, the telephone control device 20 performs the incoming call processing and the incoming call response processing to the telephone terminal 10, so that even in the second embodiment, it is possible to change the timing of checking the contents of the new mail as explained in Figs. 3 to 5.

[0046] [Extended embodiment] Although the present invention has been described above with reference to the embodiments, the present invention is not limited to the above 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. [Explanation of symbols]

[0047] 1...telephone system, 10...telephone terminal, 11...line 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

1. 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 receives and stores new e-mails addressed to a preset user from a mail server of the IP network, The telephone terminal has one or more line keys for performing operations related to sending and receiving voice calls, and destinations are individually assigned to the line keys in advance, and when displaying the arrival status of new mail addressed to the user of the terminal acquired from the gateway, the arrival status of new mail from the destination is displayed by the display lamp of the line key corresponding to the destination. A telephone system characterized by:

2. 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 receives and stores new e-mails addressed to a preset user from a mail server of the IP network, The telephone terminal has one or more line keys for performing operations related to sending and receiving voice calls, and destinations are individually assigned to the line keys in advance, and when displaying the arrival status of new mail addressed to the user of the terminal at the gateway, the arrival status of new mail from the destination is displayed by the display lamp of the line key corresponding to the destination.

1. A telephone system comprising: 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 mail acquired from the gateway on the display lamp, and notifies the telephone terminal of the contents of the new mail acquired from the gateway in response to an operation of the line key on the telephone terminal. A telephone system characterized by:

3. 3. The telephone system according to claim 1, In response to the operation of the line key while the arrival of a new mail message is being displayed, the contents of the new mail message from the other party corresponding to the line key, which are obtained from the gateway, are displayed or audibly output. A telephone system characterized by:

4. 4. The telephone system according to claim 1, When receiving an incoming call from a destination assigned to the line key, the telephone terminal displays or outputs by voice the contents of a new mail message from the destination corresponding to the line key acquired from the gateway in response to the incoming call, in response to an operation of answering the incoming call, or in response to an operation of the line key while answering the incoming call and making a voice call. A telephone system characterized by:

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