The present invention relates in general to voice mail systems and more specifically to a method and apparatus for identifying and extracting voiced telephone numbers and email addresses from recorded voice mail messages.
A common complaint among users of voice mail systems relates to difficulties in extracting and transcribing important information from voice mail messages for later use. As an example, it is common for a caller whose call is answered by voice mail to leave a voice mail message that includes a telephone number or email address at which the caller may be contacted. Unless the caller enunciates the telephone number or email address very slowly, the voice mail recipient may be forced to replay all or a portion of the voice mail message in order to transcribe the telephone number or email address for later use. Most callers find very slow enunciation to be awkward and unnatural, with the result that the majority of such voice mail messages must be replayed once or even several times in order for the voice mail recipient to transcribe the information. Furthermore, the process for replaying voice mail messages is often complex (e.g. requiring memorization of keys on a telephone keypad which have been assigned for the replay function). The process can also be tedious (e.g. some systems require that the entire message be replayed in order to extract only the portion relating to the telephone number or email address).
According to the present invention, a system is provided for automatically identifying enunciation of telephone numbers and email addresses in voice mail messages for presentation to a user via either a voice or text, without the user being required to replay the message. Furthermore, according to the invention the extracted telephone number or email addresses may be forwarded to an application for further processing (e.g. to dial the extracted number, add the email address and/or telephone number to a contacts database, etc.)
According to another aspect of the invention, a user may specify text strings to be searched (other than telephone numbers and email addresses). Thus, a user can specify certain words such as xe2x80x9cextensionxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cemailxe2x80x9d, etc., in order to qualify the extracted number or email address information, or words such as xe2x80x9curgentlyxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cimmediatelyxe2x80x9d to identify important voice mail messages.