JP2017163469A - Telephone conference system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a telephone conference system that can motivate conference participants to activate conference and enable smooth conference progress, and that optimizes recording of telephone conversations.SOLUTION: A private branch exchange equipment of a telephone conference system has a central processing unit, a storage device, a terminal trunk that connects a channel with a terminal, a conference trunk that aggregates signals from the terminal trunk to send, and a channel switch that executes channel exchange between the terminal trunk and the conference trunk. Then, the terminal has a means of transmitting channel specific information and utterance of conference participants, and the private branch exchange equipment sends speech signals of users who received transmission of the utterance from the terminal from the terminal trunk to the conference trunk. The private branch exchange equipment sends the speech signal of the channel which received transmission during the utterance from the terminal from the terminal trunk to the conference trunk.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 7

Description

  The present invention relates to a telephone conference system, and more particularly to a telephone conference system that performs a conference smoothly by telephone and is suitable for recording a conference call.

  In a telephone call, a caller and a receiver usually make a one-to-one call. However, a telephone conference system has been proposed in which a pseudo conference is performed by a telephone call.

  For example, Patent Document 1 provides a conference trunk for a conference different from a normal trunk in an IP bridge, synthesizes voice signals of other channels except for itself by the conference trunk, and synthesizes the signal to an upstream highway. The connection to the conference is realized by sending it to (paragraph number 0013).

  Further, the telephone conference system disclosed in Patent Document 2 discloses a technique for managing the progress of a conference by connecting only the telephone terminals of participants who have been given the right to speak.

  Furthermore, Patent Document 3 discloses a telephone conference user interface. In the conference call system described in Patent Document 3, when a conference call button is pressed, a conference call signal is sent out on the line (upper left corner of page 4). And who is participating in the conference (lower left corner on page 4).

  In general, a telephone conference system supports a call recording function. For example, the function 2 of Non-Patent Document 1. Introduces this feature.

JP 2006-108769 A JP-A-10-243110 Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Sho 62-195966

Innovation Co., Ltd., “IT Trend: What are the basic functions of a teleconference system”, [online], [Search February 26, 2016], Internet <URL: http://it-trend.jp/call_meeting / article / function>

  In the prior art described in Patent Document 2, since the moderator manages the conference, there is a problem that it takes time to proceed with the conference and it is difficult for the participants of the conference to be motivated. This is because a conference participant activates the conference because he / she speaks with his own motivation. In the prior art described in Patent Document 3, a user interface called a conference call button is provided, but participation in the form of simply listening to the conference without speaking the conference is not considered. Also, the option of wanting to hear only the speech of a specific participant in the conference, or conversely, not wanting to hear only the speech of a specific participant in the conference is not considered.

  Furthermore, in the prior art telephone conference system, all voices synthesized in the conference trunk are recorded, and there is a problem that the storage capacity of recording increases. In addition, since there was no function for recording utterances of only specific speakers, extra sounds and utterances of those who did not want to hear were recorded, making it difficult to hear during playback.

  The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a teleconference system that activates the conference and enables smooth conference progress by raising the motivation of the conference participants. It is in. It is also an object to provide a teleconference system that can optimize the recording of conference calls.

  The configuration of a teleconference system for solving the above problems is a teleconference system including a terminal and a private branch exchange, and the private branch exchange includes a central processing unit, a storage device, and a terminal trunk for connecting a line to the terminal. A conference trunk that aggregates signals from the terminal trunk and transmits them to the terminal trunk, a communication path switch that performs circuit switching between the terminal trunk and the conference trunk, a user management table that correlates outgoing calls and user information from the terminal, and It is what has. Then, the terminal has means for transmitting that it is speaking at the time of participating in the conference together with the line identification information, and the private branch exchange transmits the call signal of the line that has received the message that the terminal is speaking from the terminal It is sent from the trunk to the conference trunk.

  Further, preferably, the private branch exchange holds user information and call information in a storage device, and the terminal has means for downloading user information held by the private branch exchange and call information of conference participants, And a means for specifying whether or not to listen to each conference participant, the terminal notifies the private branch exchange of information on whether or not to listen to each conference participant user, and the private branch exchange is a user of the terminal. With respect to this call, the presence / absence of transmission of a transmission signal during the conference is controlled according to the presence / absence of listening to each conference participant received from the terminal.

  According to the present invention, it is an object of the present invention to provide a teleconference system that can motivate conference participants, activate a conference, and enable smooth progress of the conference. The object can also provide a teleconference system that can optimize the recording of conference calls.

It is a block diagram of a telephone conference system. It is a figure shown about the telephone call connection in a private branch exchange. It is a figure which shows the structure and operation | movement of a conference trunk. It is a figure which shows an example of a user management table. It is a figure which shows an example of a user status table. It is a figure which shows an example of a recording management table. It is a sequence diagram showing the process of a telephone conference system. It is a figure which shows the user interface screen of a meeting application. It is a figure explaining the recording in a recording server.

  Hereinafter, an embodiment according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 to 9.

First, the configuration and operation of a telephone conference system according to an embodiment will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 to 3.
FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a telephone conference system.
FIG. 2 is a diagram showing call connection in a private branch exchange.
FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the configuration and operation of the conference trunk.

  The telephone conference system according to the present embodiment has a configuration in which the private branch exchange 1 and the recording server 90 are connected via a network 85, as shown in FIG. In addition, the mobile terminal 80 is connected by telephone via the private branch exchange 1, and the user of the mobile terminal 80 participates in the conference call.

  The private branch exchange 1 includes a central processing unit (CPU) 10, a main memory 20, a flash memory 30, a speech path switch 50, a radio trunk 60, an antenna 62, and a conference trunk 70. The flash memory 30 and the speech path switch 50 are connected by the bus 5, and the wireless trunk 60 and the conference trunk 70 are connected to the speech path switch 50.

  The central processing unit 10 controls each part of the private branch exchange 1, refers to data stored in the main memory 20, and executes a program. The main memory 20 is implemented by a semiconductor storage device, loads a program stored in the flash memory 30, and holds work data. The flash memory 30 is a nonvolatile large-capacity memory, and stores the conference program 100 and tables referred to by the conference program 100 in this embodiment.

  The conference program 100 includes a user management module 110, a terminal I / F (InterFace) module 120, a recording server I / F module 130, and a call management module 140. The user management module 110 is a module that manages users participating in the conference. The terminal I / F module 120 is a module that performs interface processing with the mobile terminal 80. The recording server I / F module 130 is a module that performs interface processing with the recording server 90. The call management module 140 is a module that performs call management for conference participants.

  The user management table 200 is a table for managing information on users who participate in the conference call system. The user status table 210 is a table for managing information in the current conference call system of users who participate in the conference call system. The user management table 200 and the user status table 210 will be described in detail later.

  The communication path switch 50 is a switch device that performs circuit switching. The portable terminal trunk 60 is a circuit that interprets a radio wave signal captured by the antenna 62 and performs connection processing with a wireless terminal. The conference trunk 70 is a circuit having a function of superimposing a conference participant's call signal entered from the terminal trunk 60 and sending it back to the terminal trunk 60 again. The configuration and operation of the terminal trunk 60 will be described in detail later.

  The wireless terminal 80 is an intelligent terminal such as a smartphone, for example, and is connected to the exchange 1 wirelessly in a predetermined frequency band, and the user can participate in the conference call system according to the present embodiment. The wireless terminal 80 is installed with a conference application (hereinafter simply referred to as “conference app”) that is responsible for the processing of the telephone conference system of the present embodiment. However, the wireless terminal 80 can be realized not only by a smartphone but also by a PHS (Personal Handy Phone System), a general mobile phone, a notebook PC (Personal Computer) having a call function, a tablet, and the like.

  The recording server 90 is a server that records a conference system call in a recording DB (Data Base) 92. In FIG. 1, although connected via a network, the private branch exchange 1 may be connected directly by, for example, USB (Universal Serial Bus) connection. In the recording DB 92, a recording management table 400 and a recording data file 410 are stored.

  Next, the flow of calls in the private branch exchange and the configuration and operation of the conference trunk will be described with reference to FIGS.

  When a connection to the telephone conference system is designated from the portable terminal 80 by a predetermined operation, as shown in FIG. 2, it is connected to the speech path switch, is subjected to circuit switching processing, and is connected to the conference trunk 70. The conference trunk 70 receives voice signals of calls that are connected one after another, and distributes it to terminals other than the terminal that has transmitted the voice signals. At that time, an arithmetic process for synthesizing with a voice signal transmitted from another terminal at the same time is also performed and distributed as one voice signal.

  By performing this control simultaneously, for example, among a maximum of 32 people, it is possible to provide all participants with a calling environment in which the voice of one participant is transmitted to all other participants.

Details of the configuration and operation of the portable terminal trunk 60, the passage switch 5, and the conference trunk 70 inside the private branch exchange 1 are as shown in FIG.
[Tx] (x is 1 to 32) in FIG. 3 represents a voice signal of a call. For example, a voice signal [T1] output from the AGC 73b-1 is a voice synthesizer 74-2, a voice synthesizer. ..,..., And input to the speech synthesizer 74-32.

  The portable terminal trunk 60 sends an audio signal to the communication path switch 5 from the transmission circuit 62 and receives an audio signal from the communication path switch 5 from the reception circuit 61. Also in the conference trunk 70, a voice signal is sent from the transmission circuit 72 to the communication path switch 5, and a voice signal is received from the reception circuit 71 from the communication path switch 5.

  Here, the voice signal from the transmission circuit 62-x of the x (x is 1 to 32) th portable terminal trunk 60-x is sent to the reception circuit 71-x of the conference trunk 70, and conversely, The voice signal from the transmission circuit 72-x of the trunk 70 is sent to the reception circuit 61-x of the portable terminal trunk 60-x.

  An AGC (Automatic Gain Control) circuit 73 is interposed between the transmitting circuit 72-x, the receiving circuit 71-x, and the speech synthesizer 74-x to optimize the signal level. As a method of optimization, for example, it is determined whether or not the input signal exceeds the preset upper and lower thresholds, and the signal level is amplified and attenuated according to the situation and transmitted to the next stage circuit. To do.

  During a call using the telephone conference system, call voice signals are aggregated in the conference trunk 70, all voices other than the voice signal sender are processed, synthesized by the voice synthesizer 74-x, and distributed. For example, the speech synthesizer 74-1 receives [T2] to [T32] other than [T1] and synthesizes them.

Next, a data structure used in the telephone conference system will be described with reference to FIGS.
FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an example of a user management table.
FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an example of a user status table.
FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an example of a recording management table.

  The user management table 200 is a table for managing information on users who participate in the telephone conference system, and includes fields of a name 200a, a user ID 200b, a password 200c, and an extension number 200d as shown in FIG.

  The name 200a stores the name of the user. The user ID 200b stores an identifier that uniquely identifies the user on the system. The password 200c stores a password when the user logs on at the time of authentication. In the extension number 200d, an extension number assigned for each user for identifying outgoing / incoming calls in the telephone conference system is stored. The private branch exchange 1 is assigned an extension number dedicated to the telephone conference system, for example, “100 to 199 series are used for the telephone conference system”.

  The user status table 210 is a table for managing information in the current conference call system of users who participate in the conference call system. As shown in FIG. 5, the extension number 210a, the logon state 210b, the conference state 210c, the listener Each field of the list 210d is configured.

  The extension number 210a stores an extension number. The extension number 210a is a key field for matching with the user management table 200. The logon state 210b stores the logon / logoff state of the user. The conference status 210c stores the status of the user in the conference call system. The three modes of “speaking”, “participating”, and “not participating” are stored. “Speaking” indicates that the user is participating in the conference and is speaking (speaking operation will be described later), and “participating” indicates that the user is participating in the conference, And it shows that it is not speaking. The listener list 210d stores an extension number corresponding to the user who has been designated as a listener (listening operation will be described later).

  The recording management table 400 is a table for managing recording data files, and as shown in FIG. 6, includes a user ID 400a, a recording start time 400b, a recording end time 400c, and a file path 400d.

  The user ID 400a stores the user ID of the speaker. In the recording start time 400b and the recording end time 400c, the recording start time and end time of the recording data file are stored in the format of year / date / hour / minute / second, respectively. For example, the user whose user ID is “yama001” indicates that recording started at 13:30:25 on February 5, 2016. The file path 400d stores the file path of the recording data file in the file system of the recording server 90.

Next, processing of the telephone conference system will be described with reference to FIG.
FIG. 7 is a sequence diagram showing processing of the telephone conference system.
Although not shown in the figure, the user needs to install the conference application on the portable terminal 80 by copying it from a portable medium such as a USB memory or downloading it from an application server.

  First, the user logs on to the conference call system from the portable terminal 80 (S01). As a result of the logon operation, a user ID and a password are sent to the private branch exchange 1 (A01). In response to this, the private branch exchange 1 performs authentication (S101), and when the authentication is successful, the state of the logon state 210b of the user status table 210 of the user is rewritten to “logon” (S102), and the portable terminal 80 is authenticated. OK is transmitted (A02).

  Next, the user performs a conference participation operation (S02). The conference participation operation is performed by turning on a conference participation / non-participation button (described later). By this operation, a conference participation notification is sent to the private branch exchange 1 using the extension number as a parameter (A03). In response, the private branch exchange 1 rewrites the state of the conference state 210c in the user status table 210 of the user to “participating” (S103), and transmits a response to the portable terminal 80 (A04).

  Next, although not shown in the figure, when there is a transmission from another user, transmission data is transmitted to the user participating in the conference (A05). However, only the transmission of the extension number in the listener list 210d of the user status table 210 is sent.

  Here, it is assumed that the user turns on the listening button (S03). The listen button is a button for designating a conference participant to listen to the speech of the conference participant (details will be described later). As a result, the private switch 1 is notified of the listen button-on event using the extension number as a parameter (A06), and the private branch exchange 1 adds the extension number to the listener list 210d of the user status table 210 of the user (A06). S104).

  Next, it is assumed that the user turns on the press talk key (S04). The press talk key is a key that is turned on when a conference participant speaks (details will be described later). As a result, a press talk key-on event is sent to the private branch exchange 1 (A07). In response to this, the private branch exchange 1 rewrites the state of the conference state 210c in the user status table 210 of the user to “speaking” (S105). In the private branch exchange 1, only the transmission of the user who pressed the press talk key, that is, the user whose conference status 210 c in the user status table 210 is “speaking” is transmitted from the portable terminal trunk 60 to the conference trunk 70.

  Then, transmission is started (A08), and transmission data is transmitted from the portable terminal 80 to the private branch exchange 1. Along with this, a recording start instruction is sent from the private branch exchange 1 to the recording server 90 using the user ID as a parameter (A101), and the recorded data is sent from the private branch exchange 1 to the recording server 90, and the recording server 90 records the data. Recording is performed as the data file 410 (S200).

  In this system model, all transmissions are recorded, but it may be possible to designate recording on / off as an option.

  Then, it is assumed that the user who has made the speech has turned off the press talk key after the speech has been finished (S05). As a result, a press talk key-off event is sent to the private branch exchange 1 (A09). In response to this, the private branch exchange 1 rewrites the state of the conference state 210c in the user status table 210 of the user to “participating” (S106). Further, the recording server 90 is instructed to end recording (A102).

  Next, it is assumed that the conference participation / non-participation button is turned off (S06). By this operation, a notice of non-participation in the conference is sent to the private branch exchange 1 (A03). In response to this, the private branch exchange 1 rewrites the state of the conference state 210c in the user status table 210 of the user to “non-participation” (S107), and transmits a response to the portable terminal 80 (A11).

  Finally, the logged-on user performs a log-off operation from the portable terminal 80 (S07), receives this (A12), and rewrites the status of the logon status 210b of the user status table 210 of the user to “log-off” ( S102).

Next, the user interface of the conference application will be described with reference to FIG.
FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a user interface screen of the conference application.

The conference application operates as one application that operates on the OS of the mobile terminal.
It is assumed that the main screen 300 of the conference application can be started up after logon, and the user is not participating in the conference when the main screen 300 of the conference app is started up.

  The main screen 300 displays a conference participation / non-participation button 301, a conference participation status 301s, a press talk key 302, a speech status 302s, and a conference participant list 310. In the conference participant list 310, information on the conference participant is displayed, the name 311 and the status 312 of the conference participant are displayed, a listening button 313 for designating listening of the conference participant, and a listening A state 313s is displayed. The conference application 82 accesses the private branch exchange 1 at regular intervals, downloads necessary information from the user management table 200 and the user status table 210, and updates the information displayed in the conference participant list.

  The conference participation / non-participation button 301 is a toggle button that indicates whether or not the user of the mobile terminal participates in the conference. The result of the operation is a “participating in conference” status, “no conference participation” "Is displayed.

  The press talk key 302 is a toggle button indicating whether or not the user of the mobile terminal speaks at the conference, and the result of the operation is displayed in the speech state 302 s as “speaking” or “not speaking”. The

  The listening button 303 is a toggle button indicating whether or not to listen to the speech of the conference participant, and the result of the operation is displayed as “listening” or “not listening” in the listening status 303s. Note that by default in the conference application, the listening button 303 is turned on for all conference participants, that is, the speech of the conference participant is listened to.

  In a normal one-to-one call, voice always goes in both directions as the call starts. However, in the teleconference system, if there are a large number of speakers, if all participants are always ready to speak, all participants will hear the background sound of the participants when not speaking. That would be a disadvantage. Therefore, in the present embodiment, for transmission, the press talk key 302 is employed as an operation of the portable terminal 80, and this disadvantage is avoided. As described in FIG. 8, as a press talk operation, by pressing once the press talk key 302 of the conference application 82 operating on the mobile terminal 80 participating in the conference call system, the state is changed to the state where the talk can be performed. The status that can be transmitted is displayed on the screen of the mobile terminal. When a call is made at this time, an audio signal is distributed to all conference participants.

  In addition, after the end of the transmission, once the press talk key 302 is pressed again, the transmission is changed from the transmission enabled state to the transmission stopped state, and it is avoided that unnecessary noise is transmitted to the participant.

  As for the operation of reception of conference participants, as a normal operation, it is possible to listen to all participants' transmissions to the conference call system. However, since it may be determined that it is not necessary to listen to everything, by turning off the listening button 313, it is possible to arbitrarily set a partner who does not listen from the conference participants.

Next, recording in the recording server will be described with reference to FIG.
FIG. 9 is a diagram for explaining recording in the recording server.
As shown in the sequence diagram of FIG. 7, transmission while using the present system is started by turning on the press talk key. Starting from this operation, the recording server 90 is instructed to start call recording, and recording is stopped by an off operation.

  In the present embodiment, as shown in FIG. 9, only the speech of the conference speaker is recorded. In a telephone conference system, when recording a conversation is considered, it is assumed that there are many situations where there are many listeners for one sender, that is, there are many non-speakers. In this state, when the call recording is performed for all the participants in the conference call system, the majority is recorded as silence. In this embodiment, such useless use of the storage medium is prevented, and the storage area of the storage device can be used effectively.

  Further, as shown in FIG. 6, the recording server 90 stores the recording start time, the recording end time, and the user ID of the speaking user for each call, as shown in FIG. On the client connected to the portable terminal 80 or the recording server 90, the transmission element 600 is graphically displayed and tapped, or the transmission part is selected by using a pointing device such as a mouse. Let it play. Accordingly, it is possible to arbitrarily select and reproduce a portion to be confirmed while confirming the flow of the conversation, and it is possible to improve the usability at the time of reproduction for the user.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Private branch exchange 10 ... Central processing unit 20 ... Main memory 30 ... Flash memory 50 ... Communication path switch 60 ... Portable terminal trunk 70 ... Conference trunk 80 ... Portable terminal 90 ... Recording server

Claims (7)

In a conference call system comprising a terminal and a private branch exchange,
The private branch exchange is
A central processing unit;
A storage device;
A terminal trunk for line connection with the terminal;
A conference trunk that aggregates signals from the terminal trunk and transmits the aggregated signals to the terminal trunk; and
A communication path switch for circuit switching between the terminal trunk and the conference trunk;
The terminal has means for transmitting, together with the line specifying information, that the speech is being made at the time of participating in the conference,
The telephone conference system, wherein the private branch exchange transmits a call signal of a line that has received a call from the terminal to the conference trunk from the terminal trunk. The means to send a message during a meeting is
The telephone conference system according to claim 1, wherein the talk key is displayed on an operation screen of the terminal. The private branch exchange is
The storage device stores user information and call information,
The terminal has means for downloading user information held by the private branch exchange and call information of the conference participation user,
The terminal has means for specifying whether or not to listen to each conference participant user,
The terminal notifies the private branch exchange of information on presence / absence of listening for each conference participant user,
The private branch exchange controls the presence / absence of transmission of a call signal transmitted from the line of the conference participating user according to the presence / absence of listening to each conference participating user received from the terminal regarding the call of the user of the terminal. The telephone conference system according to claim 1. The means for designating whether or not to listen is:
The conference call system according to claim 3, wherein the conference call button is a listening button displayed on an operation screen of the terminal. The telephone conference system further includes a recording server that receives call data from the private branch exchange and records the call data.
2. The telephone conference system according to claim 1, wherein the recording server records only a transmission of a user who has received a notification during a conference participation from the terminal. Furthermore, it has an information processing device connected to the recording server,
The recording server is
Each user has a table that holds the recording start time and recording end time,
6. The telephone conference system according to claim 5, wherein the information processing apparatus is provided with means for displaying a recording start time and a recording end time for each user.   7. The information processing apparatus includes means for designating a transmission element for displaying a recording start time and a recording end time for each user and reproducing recorded data corresponding to the call. Teleconference system.

Images