Enhancing Enterprise User Productivity with Embedded Context-Aware Voice Applications

The increasing amount of software and computational capabilities in voice endpoints, switches, and networks creates an opportunity for embedding advanced applications in voice communication paths. Particularly in an enterprise environment, such applications can alter the traditional behavior of voice communications from simply connecting two or more people to software-assisted connection establishment and enhanced on-call features. In this paper, we claim that embedding context-aware applications in communication paths can greatly increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and convenience of enterprise communications and thus the productivity of enterprise users. We identify the challenges associated with embedding context-aware applications in communication paths and exemplify our central claim by presenting a context-aware voice communications application CallerID++. CallerID++ aims at improving the aged concept of caller ID as the basis for a callee ´s decision to accept or reject an incoming call. Through a call acceptance negotiation between caller and callee prior to call establishment, CallerID++ allows the callee to assess the importance of an incoming call relative to the callee´s current activity. CallerID++ thus helps minimizing unwanted interruptions without rejecting important calls.