Telephone System

Abstract

To easily create and transfer mail with less work load.SOLUTION: A gateway 30 includes a mailbox for storing mails exchanged between telephone terminals, and the telephone terminal 10 transmits a mail addressed to a designated transfer destination user including a telephone brokerage content registered in advance as a fixed phrase according to the user's brokerage mail transmission operation to the gateway 30, and stores the mail received by the gateway 30 in the mailbox corresponding to the transfer destination user.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Description

[Technical field]

[0001] The present invention relates to a mail processing technique for exchanging mail between telephone terminals 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 above-mentioned conventional technology, in which the arrival of new e-mail is notified by using the indicator lamp of the telephone terminal, the user can immediately check the arrival of new e-mail on the telephone terminal without having to access the mail server to check the received e-mail. However, when sending e-mail, the user still needs to start a mailer on a PC or smartphone other than the telephone terminal 10 as in the conventional technology, and for example, create a relay e-mail indicating the contents of the call relay or forward an e-mail to be shared, and there is a problem that the workload of creating and forwarding e-mail is not reduced.

[0005] The present invention has been made to solve these problems, and has as its object to provide a mail processing technique that enables mail to be easily created and forwarded with a small workload. [Means for solving the problem]

[0006] In order to achieve the above object, the telephone system according to 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 an email addressed to a designated user to be forwarded, the email including a telephone forwarding content registered in advance as a fixed phrase, to the gateway in response to a user's operation for forwarding an email, and the gateway storing the received email. Among them, specific incoming mails are filtered according to the importance of the mails you have set in advance. The mail is stored in the mailbox corresponding to the intermediate user.

[0007] In addition, one configuration example of the telephone system according to the present invention is configured such that the telephone terminal displays the arrival status of new email 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 email obtained from the gateway in response to operation of an email confirmation key while the arrival of the new email is being displayed.

[0008] Furthermore, 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 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 mail confirmation key on the telephone terminal.

[0009] In order to achieve the above 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 for 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 for controlling the telephone terminal to establish a voice call via the IP network by the telephone terminal, the gateway having a mailbox for storing emails exchanged between the telephone terminals, the telephone control device transmitting an email addressed to a designated destination user, the email including a telephone call transfer content registered in advance as a fixed phrase, in response to a user's operation of transmitting a relayed email at the telephone terminal, and the gateway transmitting the received email. Among them, specific incoming mails are filtered according to the importance of the mails you have set in advance. The mail is stored in the mailbox corresponding to the intermediate user. 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 a mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the second embodiment. [Figure 4] FIG. 13 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a telephone system according to a third embodiment. [Diagram 5] FIG. 13 is a sequence diagram showing an email processing operation of the telephone system according to the third embodiment. [Figure 6] FIG. 13 is a sequence diagram showing another example of the mail processing operation of the telephone system according to the third 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. 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.

[0015] At this time, the gateway 30 may set a filter in advance according to the importance of the mail to be saved, and save only specific mail that passes through the filter among the mails addressed to the user. This makes it possible to narrow down the new mails notified at the telephone terminal 10 to only those with high importance, reducing the burden on the user for checking mails and saving the memory resources of the gateway 30. The filter according to the importance of the mail may be set in advance to filter new mails according to, for example, the sender address, the subject of the mail, or specific keywords contained in the body of the mail.

[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] 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 of 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.

[0018] Therefore, the user can check the new mail of which the arrival has been notified on the telephone terminal 10 with the extremely simple operation of pressing the mail confirmation key 11. In general telephone terminals 10, line lamps are provided on the line keys for making and receiving calls, and the indicator lamp 12 and the mail confirmation key 11 may be constituted by these line lamps and line keys. Also, the mail confirmation key 11 and the indicator lamp 12 may be constituted by function keys to which pre-prepared functions can be assigned and indicator lamps provided on those function keys.

[0019] As a result, when the indicator lamp 12 and mail confirmation key 11 are configured with these line lamps and line keys, the common line lamps and line keys 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. Therefore, the user can use services related to the arrival and checking the contents of new mail without feeling uncomfortable. 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.

[0020] In addition, the telephone terminal 10 is 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 are registered in advance as a fixed phrase, in response to a user's operation to send a relay email. For example, when a 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 user notifies the caller that the person in charge is unavailable and ends the call, and then performs a relay email sending operation, whereby a relay email indicating a series of contents of the call transfer is automatically generated and sent to the designated destination user via the gateway 30.

[0021] In this case, the relayed email is automatically generated using a pre-registered fixed phrase such as "Please call back to Mr. XX (090-aaaa-bbbb)." The name and telephone number of the call-back destination and the email address of the person in charge of the relayed email may be manually input by the user when sending the relayed email, or may be configured to be specified by referring to a pre-registered telephone directory.

[0022] For the relay mail sending operation, a corresponding operation key may be provided separately, or an existing operation key of the telephone terminal 10 may be used. For example, the above-mentioned existing function keys or line keys may be used as relay mail sending operation keys. In particular, when a user is assigned to these function keys or line keys, the user may be used as the relay destination. This eliminates the need for the user to specify the relay destination.

[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 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.

[0024] As shown in Fig. 2, when the telephone terminal 10A transfers the call to a person in charge after the user answers the call from the IP network NW (step S100), the person in charge may not be available to transfer the call. In such a case, the user notifies the calling party that the person in charge is unavailable and ends the call (step S101), and then performs a transfer mail transmission operation (step S102). As a result, a relayed mail is automatically generated by telephone terminal 10A (step S103), transmitted to gateway 30 (step S104), and stored in a mailbox corresponding to the person in charge of gateway 30 (step S105).

[0025] 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. At this time, 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 telephone number of the callback destination may be input by the user when sending the relayed email, or may be specified by referring to a telephone directory registered in advance.

[0026] After that, when the time for checking mail arrives at time T2, the telephone terminal 10B notifies the gateway 30 of a mail checking request regarding the mailbox corresponding to the user of the terminal itself that is 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).

[0027] 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). As a result, when the user who has confirmed the arrival of new email presses the email confirmation key 11 of 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).

[0028] 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 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 S116).

[0029] [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 user, including the telephone transfer content registered in advance as a standard phrase, in the mailbox of the gateway 30 in response to the user's operation to send a transferred email. As a result, with the extremely simple operation of sending a relayed email, a relayed email is automatically generated and sent to the designated relay destination user. 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.

[0030] Furthermore, in this embodiment, the telephone terminal 10 may be configured to display the arrival status of new e-mail addressed to the user of the terminal in the mailbox of the gateway 30 using the display lamp 12, and to obtain the new e-mail from the gateway 30 and display or output it as audio in response to operation of the e-mail confirmation key 11 while the arrival of the new e-mail 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.

[0031] 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. This makes it possible to easily view the contents of the notified new mail with a very small workload.

[0032] 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.

[0033] In addition, since the telephone terminal 10 is configured to periodically check 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, step S110 in Fig. 2 can be omitted, and the processing load on the telephone terminal 10 can be reduced.

[0034] [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 emails are exchanged between telephone terminals 10. In the present embodiment, an example will be described in which an email being viewed is forwarded to another telephone terminal 10.

[0035] 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 it as audio, and in response to the mail forwarding operation during the display or audio output, to save the forwarded mail addressed to the specified recipient, including the content entered by the user, in the mailbox of the gateway 30.

[0036] 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 on existing telephone terminals 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.

[0037] [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 forwarding mail is sent from the telephone terminal 10A to the telephone terminal 10B will be described as an example.

[0038] As shown in FIG. 3, when telephone terminal 10A is displaying or outputting audibly an email retrieved from gateway 30 (step S200), if the user performs an email forwarding operation (step S201), telephone terminal 10A acquires the forwarding destination of the displayed email through the user's forwarding destination input operation (step S202), automatically generates a forwarding email addressed to the forwarding destination that includes the contents of the displayed email (step S203), and sends it to gateway 30 (step S204).

[0039] 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.

[0040] [Advantages of the second embodiment] In this manner, in this embodiment, the telephone terminal 10 displays the arrival status of new e-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 e-mail confirmation key 11 while the arrival of the new e-mail is being displayed, the new e-mail is obtained from the gateway 30 and displayed or output as audio, and in response to the operation of sending an e-mail while it is being displayed or output as audio, the e-mail addressed to the specified recipient, including the content entered by the user, is saved in the mailbox of the gateway 30.

[0041] As a result, with the extremely simple operation of forwarding an email while viewing the email, a forwarded email containing the contents of the email being displayed 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, making it possible to easily forward emails with little work load, and significantly reducing the workload required for email forwarding operations.

[0042] [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.

[0043] 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.

[0044] [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.

[0045] 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 10B 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.

[0046] Fig. 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 Fig. 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 is blinked 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).

[0047] Fig. 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 Fig. 5, the telephone terminal 10A creates a relayed mail in response to the operation of sending the relayed mail and sends it to the gateway 30, but as shown in Fig. 6, the telephone control device 20 may be configured to create a relayed mail in response to the operation of sending the relayed mail of the telephone terminal 10A, for example, pressing an operation key, and send it to the gateway 30. As a result, even if the telephone terminal 10A is not an IP telephone terminal but a dedicated extension telephone terminal (key telephone), the mail processing operation of the first embodiment described above can be executed in the same manner in this embodiment.

[0048] [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]

[0049] 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

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 has a mailbox for storing emails exchanged between the telephone terminals; The telephone terminal transmits to the gateway, in response to a user's operation for transmitting a forwarded mail, a mail addressed to the designated forwarded user, including a telephone forwarding content registered in advance as a fixed phrase, and the gateway stores, in the mailbox corresponding to the forwarded user, specific received mails filtered according to a preset importance level of the mail among the received mails.

1. A telephone system comprising:

2. 2. The telephone system of claim 1, The telephone terminal displays the arrival status of new mail 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 mail acquired from the gateway in response to an operation of a mail confirmation key while the arrival of the new mail is being displayed. A telephone system characterized by:

3. 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 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 mail confirmation key on the telephone terminal. A telephone system characterized by:

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; 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 telephone terminal through the IP network by performing call control of the telephone terminal; Equipped with the gateway has a mailbox for storing emails exchanged between the telephone terminals; The telephone control device transmits an email addressed to a designated destination user, including a telephone transfer content registered in advance as a standard text, in response to a user's operation of transmitting a transferred email on the telephone terminal, and the gateway stores, among the received emails, a specific received email filtered in accordance with a preset importance of the email in the mailbox corresponding to the destination user.

1. A telephone system comprising:

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