Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a communication device and in particular to an apparatus for allowing an outgoing message to be paired with an end user's response.

Background of the Invention

Increasingly, businesses are attempting to improve efficiency by automating processes that typically have been performed by human interaction.

One such case relates to the issuing of electronic messages to an existing client base, where the electronic messages could take many different forms, for example SMS, e-mail or MMS messages.

However, as a business may send out many messages in a day, which could be sent to many hundreds of people, it can be difficult and time consuming attempting to correlate a received message with a transmitted message. For example, if a series of SMS messages are sent to a client and the client responds to just one of these SMS messages, it may be unclear to the original sender as to which one of the SMS messages the client is responding.

Furthermore, these messages may be sent to many hundreds of people located outside of the business' country of operation. For instance, a business operating in one country may wish to send out a message to several hundred people located in a different country, or perhaps several hundred people located in several different countries.

Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an automated process for identifying a recipient's area, or geographic location, sending an electronic message locally to the recipient based on their area, and correlating a received message with a transmitted message. Summary of the Invention

In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a communication device, and a method of communicating a message, according to the accompanying claims.

By identifying the geographic location of each recipient the message is to be sent to, and by assigning to the outbound message a communication address specific to the geographic location of the recipient in question, the cost of transmitting the message, as well as the cost of replying to the sent message, is much reduced. Furthermore, a recipient will recognise the message as originating locally to the recipient's area.

Brief Description of the Figures

An embodiment of the invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the drawings, of which:

Figure 1 illustrates a communication device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description of a Preferred Embodiment of the Invention

The following embodiment describes a communication device that allows an outgoing message to be assigned a communication address specific to an area, or a geographic location, of a recipient for whom the message is destined, and allows a message received from the recipient to be paired with the corresponding message sent to the recipient.

Whilst the invention is described with reference to a specific embodiment, the invention should not be construed as being limited to this embodiment, and variations of the embodiment as well as other embodiments and variations of those may well fall within the scope of the invention. Accordingly, the invention is to be limited only by the appended claims.

Figure 1 illustrates a message server 30 that is arranged to receive data from a first communication device 10. The message server 30 can receive the data from the first communication device 10 by any suitable means, for example via a local area network, the Internet or a telephone link, and via a wired or wireless communication link. Alternatively, the data may be loaded locally onto the message server 30 (e.g. using a USB key, etc.). If the first communication device 10 is located remotely to the message server 30, it would be preferable for the communication link that is established between the first communication device 10 and the message server 30 to be secure. The message server 30 is furthermore arranged to establish a communication link with one or more communication devices 40, each communication device 40 associated with a respective recipient. The communication link between the message server 30 and the recipient 40 can be any suitable communication link.

The first communication device 10 includes a database 20, where, for illustrative purposes, the database 20 includes records having the following fields: a unique identifier, a message to be sent to one or more recipients and a communication address for the one or more recipients. As would be appreciated by a person skilled in the art, the database records may include additional fields, for example a password for increased security or, if different records within the database 20 belong to different clients (i.e. an entity that wishes to send a message to a recipient), then a field to identify the client to which the record belongs.

If a number of messages within the database 20 need to be sent to one or more recipients, where responses to the messages need to be tracked, the data from the respective database records is sent from the database 20 in the first communication device 10 to the message server 30. The message server 30 is then arranged to send the respective messages to the appropriate recipients as described below.

The message server 30 includes means (not shown) for receiving and transmitting a message. As a person skilled in the art would appreciate, the mechanism for receiving and transmitting a message will depend upon the type of message being sent and the type of communication system that the message server 30 forms part off. For example, the messages may be e-mail, SMS or MMS or any other suitable form of electronic message, and the message system may be part of a computer network or a telephone system. The message server 30 also includes a processor (not shown) for performing the processing steps required of the message server 30.

To allow a transmitted and received message to be correlated (as will be described below in more detail), a communication address from which the message is indicated as being transmitted from first needs to be assigned to a message that is to be communicated to a recipient.

The one or more recipients of the message to be sent from the message server 30 are each associated with their respective destination address. The destination address may be the communication address for the recipient, or may be some other identifier unique to the recipient in question. The destination address for the recipient may be stored on the database 20 and retrieved for use with the sending of the message, as described below. This is likely to be the case if the message server 30 has already sent one or more messages to the particular recipient in question, and subsequent messages for the same recipient are specified as requiring the same communication address.

The destination address will typically depend on the location of the respective recipient. For instance, if the message to be sent is an SMS message, and if the SMS message is to be sent from the UK to a recipient based in France, the destination address of the SMS message will typically be preceded with the digits +33, or 0033, followed by the recipient's unique destination address, for instance 0033123456789.

The message server 30 may therefore identify the geographic location of each recipient to which the message is to be sent, based on each recipient's respective destination address. In the case of multiple recipients destined to receive the same message, each recipient, based on their respective geographic location, will be associated with a corresponding destination address. In the above example, the message server 30 will identify the location of the recipient with a destination address commencing with +33 to be France.

The process for sending messages locally to each recipient's geographic location will now be described.

The message server 30, upon receipt of the message to be sent to the one or more recipients, selects a communication address local to the geographic location of the respective recipient. For instance, the message server 30 may receive from a client, by electronic means (i.e. by e-mail or by a telephone link), a message destined for a recipient based in France, with a corresponding destination address of +33621324436. The message server 30 will therefore select a communication address local to the recipient's French location. In this example, the message server 30 will select a communication address such that the message will be delivered via a telephone number commencing with the digits 0033 etc. The selected communication addresses may be selected from a database of local communication addresses. Alternatively, the selected

communication addresses may be dynamically selected such that they are local to the geographic location of the respective recipient for whom the message is to be sent.

The message may then be transmitted to the respective recipient.

Transmittal of the message may take many forms as known to one skilled in the art, but preferably, the message is communicated over a network, such as the Internet, to a messaging system (e.g. a PSTN) that is local to the recipient.

Similarly, if the message is to be transmitted to a plurality of recipients in a number of different areas, a respective communication address is selected that is specific to each respective area.

For example, a message server 30 based in the UK receives from a client a message to be sent as an SMS message to a total of two hundred people. Each recipient's destination address is identified by the message server, and in this case one hundred of the people are found to be associated with a destination address (in this case, a mobile telephone number) beginning with the digits +33, and thus are determined to be located in France. The other hundred people are associated with a destination address beginning with the digits +49, and thus are determined to be located in Germany.

The message server 30 may then use a preselected French mobile telephone number for the message to be sent to the recipients based in France, and correspondingly may use a preselected German mobile telephone number for the message to be sent to the recipients based in Germany. Each respective message may then be communicated from the message server 30 to a mobile telecommunication base station (such as a GSM station) based in the respective recipient's country via a local carrier responsible for delivering the message to the recipient's communication device (e.g. mobile handset). Subsequently, via a local wireless network, each respective message that is transmitted from the respective local communication address may be delivered locally to its respective recipient. The transmitted message is thus delivered to the recipient with a communication address local to the recipient's geographic location, or area.

Advantageously, the cost of effecting large numbers of message

transmittals from one country to another is greatly reduced due to the local nature of the delivery of the message. Furthermore, a recipient may be more inclined to respond to the message knowing that they will be responding to the message via a local communication address and thus at a local rate, as opposed to an international rate as required if the present invention were not being used, thus adding to the efficiency and usefulness of the present invention.

It is to be noted that the geographic location of a recipient should be construed broadly, and may encompass any form of identifier of the area in which the recipient is located. For instance, a geographic location, or more generally termed an "area" of the recipient, may be a telephonic area code, or country code, an Internet protocol (IP) address, a domain name or uniform resource locator (URL) address, etc. The process for allowing an outgoing message to be paired with a recipient's response by the message server 30 using the communication address from which the outgoing message has been sent from will now be described. In the following description, it should be appreciated that the selection of the various communication addresses for sending messages to recipients is done in accordance with the above-described selection of communication addresses local to each recipient's area, or geographic location. In other words, in the following description, there is no mention of a destination address, and the term

communication address is used generically - however, the selection and use of communication addresses for pairing an outgoing message with an incoming response is nevertheless done in accordance with each recipient's area, or geographic location, as described above.

First, the message server 30 selects a communication address for sending an initial message from. The communication address is selected to be different to any other communication addresses that have been used to send a message to the intended recipient 40 and to which the intended recipient 40 has not yet responded. When a response from the recipient 40 is received, which should be sent back to the originating communication address, the message server 30 is able to pair the response with relevant message that is being responded to by determining which message was sent to the recipient 40 from the communication address the response was received at.

For example, based on a text messaging system, if a first text message is sent from the message server on telephone number 0123456789 to a recipient on telephone number 0987654321 and the telephone number 0123456789 has not been used to send any other message to 0987654321, then upon receipt of a message at telephone number 0123456789 from 0987654321 the message from 0987654321 must be in response to the earlier message.

It should be noted, however, that although the above embodiment describes a text messaging system, as stated above any suitable messaging system may be used, for example e-mail or MMS. Accordingly, upon receipt at the message server 30 of data from the first communication device 10, the message server 30 selects a unique

communication address pairing for each message that is to be sent to a recipient 40. For example, for each message to be sent to a recipient 40, the message server 30 selects the next available communication address from a pool of preset communication addresses and uses the sequence of communication addresses to deliver respective messages to the recipient 40. Upon receipt of a response from the recipient 40, the message server 30 is able to pair the received response with the sent message based on the communication address that the original message was sent from and the communication address of the device sending the response.

Once a response to a message has been received, the relevant

communication address that the original message was sent from can be freed up for use with another message that needs to be sent to the recipient.

Clearly, as the message/response pairing is determined on unique pairing of receiving and transmitting communication addresses, the message server 30 can use the same communication addresses for different recipients.

From the pool of pre-set communication addresses, a communication address is available if any of the following is true:

1) A communication address has not been used to send a message to a

specific communication address of a recipient (i.e. the communication address may have been used to send messages to communication addresses associated with different recipients but not the same recipient. That is to say, the combination of sending and receiving communication addresses are used to allow a pairing between a transmitted message and a response to be made). 2) A communication address has been used as in 1) above but the recipient of the previous message has replied to that message, thereby freeing up this communication address for further use with the same recipient. Optionally, the message server 30 can be configured to provide an alert if the number of unique communication addresses for a given recipient's

communication address falls below a predetermined number.

Once the message server 30 has paired a response with a transmitted message, the response is forwarded to the first communication device 10 with the unique identifier that was associated with the original message in the database record, thereby allowing the first communication device 10 to determine which message the response is associated with. Any suitable form for communicating the response to the first communication device 10 can be used, for example:

1) Leaving the message in a personal message box where the first communication device 10 can download content at intervals (similar to how e- mail works).

2) Using a standard POP mailbox.

3) POST or GET calls to a URL with the relevant variables.

4) For certain technologies (such as COM), a persistent link to a socket can be made (similar to how messaging programs work) and an immediate notification of a response can be made using this link. Any messages that cannot be delivered (if the link fails, etc.) are queued until they can be. This is similar to how instant messaging works.

For increased security, information that may be stored in the database 20 of the first communication device 10, for example recipient details and/or message content, could be stored in the message server 30, and the first communication device 10 could initiate a message transmission from the message server 30 to a recipient 40 by the use of a job number with an identifier. The job number can be used to identify to the message server 30 the recipient and message to be sent to the recipient. The identifier has the same purpose as the unique identifier as used in the above embodiment.

The first communication device 10 can be configured with a control panel (not shown) that allows a user of the first communication device 10 to control the use of the message server 30. The control panel can be used to:

1) Pre-load user information and standard messages to minimise the relay of sensitive data and allow for easy scheduling of future or ongoing messages;

2) Define message sending schedules;

3) Create/edit/manage user profiles. A user can be of the following types:

a. Operator - Access all features except user manager, billing information and reports;

b. Administrator - Can also edit users, view billing information and review reports; and

c. Super user - Can create companies and view all companies;

4) Pre-load a list of communication addresses and create groups of addresses so that a message can be sent to a whole distribution list as well as individuals;

5) Review inbound messages;

6) View a range of reports;

7) View logs of inbound and outbound messages;

8) Use a special merge syntax to perform mail merges; and

9) Billing manager - view invoices and make payments.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the disclosed subject matter may be modified in numerous ways and may assume embodiments other than the preferred forms specifically set out as described above. For example, the message server 30 can be arranged to receive requests to send messages from a number of different communication devices.