JP2006197251A - Conference management supporting method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a conference management supporting method for grasping substantial participating status for participants to support remote communication performed by a lot of people. <P>SOLUTION: A server 10 transmits a predetermined request signal to all of terminals 11. Upon receipt of the confirmation request, each terminal 11 displays a predetermined message on a display unit 114, and prompts a user to operate an input portion 115 to return a response. When the user performs a predetermined input operation at the terminal 11, a confirmation signal is transmitted to the server 10. When no predetermined time is inputted, a user's schedule data are read from a memory 113, and a message corresponding to user's action schedule in the current time is determined and transmitted to the server 10. Upon receipt of response from all of the terminals 11, the server 10 determines and records substantial participating status for each participant at a time when the response is received. After the end of the conference, the server 10 analyzes generated participating status information, and transmits a conference audio data to the terminals 11 if needed. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a technology for supporting remote communication performed via a communication network by a large number of people, such as a conference.

  There is a system for performing a conference via a communication network using a plurality of computer terminals installed at geographically distant locations. Participants in the conference, who are users of this system, sit in front of each terminal and speak, and the voice is picked up by the microphone provided in the terminal. Sent to all terminals. The terminal that receives the audio signal reproduces the audio. In this way, the user's remarks are delivered to all the other participants, while remote remarks are realized by receiving the remarks of the other participants at his / her own terminal. However, in such a conference system, only audio information is exchanged, and naturally, visual information such as the other party's facial expression cannot be acquired. To give an extreme example, unless a participant speaks, whether the participant has participated in the conference and is thinking by listening to what other people are saying, or has already left the conference in front of the terminal and has already joined the conference. Even if it is not, it cannot be determined. As described above, if the conference is proceeded without confirming whether each participant substantially participates in the conference (substantial participation status), the significance of holding the conference may be lost.

  Therefore, various techniques for confirming the absence of a communication partner have been proposed (see Patent Documents 1 and 2). Patent Document 1 discloses a technique for determining whether or not a user of a communication partner terminal is absent in an IP telephone system. However, with this technique, it is possible to check absence in one-to-one communication, but it is impossible to grasp the participation status of each of a plurality of participants. Patent Document 2 discloses a method for detecting confirmation of attendance / absence of each terminal user by calling each terminal. However, since this method takes a long time to detect, the smooth progress of the conference is hindered.

JP-A-7-135534 JP 63-059053 A

  The present invention has been made in view of the above-described background, and supports the operation of remote communication performed by a large number of people by grasping the substantial participation status of a plurality of participants without hindering the progress of the conference. The purpose is to do.

  In order to solve the above-described problem, the present invention provides a conference step including a server and a plurality of terminals used by each user, wherein the server transmits a confirmation request to the terminal at predetermined time intervals. And an input request step in which the terminal receives the confirmation request and prompts the user of the terminal to input a response; and even if a predetermined time elapses after the terminal receives the confirmation request, When the input is not made, an extraction step of extracting the action schedule information of the user with reference to the schedule data of the user stored in the terminal, and the response input by the terminal in the input request step or A response step of transmitting the action schedule information extracted in the extraction step to the server; and the server receives the response and responds to the received response. Zui to determine the participation to the conference of the user, provides a conference operation support method and a determination step of recording the participation information. According to the present invention, since the substantial participation status of each participant in the conference can be grasped at any time by the server, it is possible to favorably support the operation of the conference.

  In a preferred aspect, the conference management support method includes a voice recording step in which the server sequentially records speech contents in the conference as voice data, and the server pre-determines participation status information recorded in the determination step. A calculation step of accumulating the number of times and calculating a participation rate of the user in the conference; a specifying step of specifying a user whose participation rate calculated in the calculation step is a predetermined value or less; and the server Further includes a data providing step of providing the voice data recorded in the voice recording step to the user terminal identified in the identifying step. According to this aspect, since the audio data in which the content of the conference is recorded can be provided according to the participation status of the participant, each participant can assist in understanding the content of the conference.

  In another aspect, the present invention is a server that manages a conference that is performed using a plurality of terminals, and that transmits a confirmation request to the terminal at predetermined time intervals, and receives a response from the terminal A receiving unit; a determining unit that determines a user's participation status in the conference based on a response received by the receiving unit; and a recording unit that records the participation status determined by the determining unit as participation status information; A server is provided.

  In still another aspect, the present invention provides a terminal that is used in a conference performed via a communication network and has a voice communication function, and stores schedule data of a user of the terminal, and the communication network. A request receiving means for receiving a confirmation request via the operator, an operator for causing the user to input a response, and if the user's input is not made even after a predetermined time has elapsed after receiving the confirmation request, An extraction means for reading out the schedule data from the storage means and extracting the action schedule information of the user, and a response input using the operator or the action schedule information extracted by the extraction means via the communication network And a transmission means for transmitting the data.

<Embodiment>
Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the overall configuration of a conference system 1 according to the present invention. The conference system 1 includes a server 10, a plurality of terminals 11 used by each conference participant, and a communication network 12 that connects each terminal 11 and the server 10. In the figure, for convenience of explanation, three terminals 11A, 11B, and 11C are shown for the terminal 11, but in actuality, there are as many terminals 11 as there are conference participants. There is no functional difference between the terminals. Further, in the following description, “participant” refers to a terminal user registered as a conference participant in the server 10, and this is positive for the conference by making a speech using the terminal 11. It does not mean only those who are participating in. A client conference application to be described later is executed on the terminal 11 and can participate in the conference, that is, the terminal 11 can be used to grasp the content of another participant's speech, and the user can also speak. For example, a user who sits in front of the terminal but does other work and does not listen to the contents of the conference at all is included. In other words, it is a concept that includes those who are substantially participating in the conference and those who are not. Alternatively, the client conference application is activated on the terminal 11, but the user who is in a state where the terminal cannot be operated in the first place due to going out or the like is also included. In addition, the “conference” in the present specification is merely an example of a form of communication performed by a large number of people, and is not limited to a conference in the sense that the application target of the present invention is normally used. .

  FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a functional configuration of the server 10. As shown in the figure, the server 10 includes a control unit 101, a communication unit 102, a timer 103, a storage unit 104, and a bus 105 that connects the units. The control unit 101 includes various arithmetic processing processors such as a CPU, and controls each unit of the server 10 by executing an application program (hereinafter referred to as a server conference application) for providing an audio conference service. When the server conference application is executed, a voice list and a list of participants issued by the participants are sent via the communication network 12 to all the participants of the terminal 11 on which the client application described later is executed. To all participants' terminals. In addition to the functions of the conventional voice conference system, the server conference application transmits a predetermined confirmation request for reporting all the participation statuses to the current conference to all the terminals 11 at predetermined time intervals. And receiving a response from the terminal to the request signal, and performing a function according to the response, such as determining a substantial participation status of each participant (terminal user). Details of the operation for determining the substantial participation status will be described later. Further, the server conference application sequentially stores the content of each participant's speech, that is, all audio data provided from each terminal 11 (hereinafter referred to as conference audio data) together with the speaker and the time when the speech was made. The unit 104 has a function of storing and editing.

  The communication unit 102 includes a transmission / reception circuit and the like, and exchanges audio signals and various data described later with each terminal 11 via the communication network 12 under the control of the control unit 101. The timer 103 is a time measuring mechanism for generating time information. The storage unit 104 is a storage device including a RAM, a ROM, a hard disk, and the like. The storage unit 104 is used as a work area of the CPU of the control unit 101, and stores OS (operating system) software and the above-described server conference application. In addition, the storage unit 104 is provided with an area for recording the above-described conference audio data and schedule data of each participant described later. The storage unit 104 further stores an ID for identifying the conference, an opening time and an ending time of the conference, a conference participant, and an ID for identifying each participant. The conference audio data is supplied to the control unit 101 in response to a request from the control unit 101.

  FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a functional configuration of the terminal 11. As shown in the figure, the terminal 11 includes a control unit 111, a communication unit 112, a storage unit 113, a display unit 114, an input unit 115, a voice input / output unit 116, and a bus 117 that connects the units. The control unit 111 includes various arithmetic processing processors such as a CPU, and controls each unit of the terminal 11 by executing an application (hereinafter referred to as a client conference application) for receiving the voice conference service from the server 10. The communication unit 112 includes a transmission / reception circuit and the like, and exchanges audio signals and various data described later with the server 10 via the communication network 12 under the control of the control unit 111. The storage unit 113 is a storage device such as a RAM, a ROM, and a hard disk, and is used as a work area of the CPU of the control unit 111, and stores the OS software for the terminal 11 and the client conference application described above. In addition, the storage unit 113 stores an ID for identifying a user who uses the terminal, and schedule data describing a schedule of the user of the terminal 11. This schedule data describes, for example, a user's action schedule in time series, and describes an ID for identifying a meeting that the user plans to participate in, and a time zone in which the user participates in this meeting. For example, for a conference with a conference ID 001 held from 13:00 to 16:00, “participate from 13:00 to 14:00, go out from 14:00 to 14:45, and again meet from 14:45 to 16:00 Information such as “participate in ID001 meeting” is described. The display unit 114 is a display device that includes a liquid crystal screen and the like, and displays a participant's name provided from the server 10 and other information related to the conference. The input unit 115 is an input device such as a keyboard, a mouse, and a push button switch. The voice input / output unit 116 is a voice processing device having a microphone, an A / D conversion circuit, a speaker, and the like. The voice input / output unit 116 detects a voice uttered by a user and provides the voice signal to the control unit 111. Play the audio of other participants sent from.

  Next, the operation of the conference system 1 will be described with reference to FIG. In the following, it is assumed that a participant in the conference may leave, temporarily leave, or join in the middle. Further, the server 10 and each terminal 11 start a server conference application and a client server application, respectively, each terminal 11 transmits a user ID and a conference ID to the server, and the server 10 should participate in the conference and the conference. Registered (including those who are scheduled to leave temporarily). When the meeting start time arrives, recording of the spoken voice is started.

  When the predetermined time arrives, the server 10 transmits a predetermined request signal to all the terminals 11 (step S100). When each terminal 11 receives this confirmation request (step S102), a message such as "If you want to confirm the participation status of the conference, please press a predetermined button on your terminal" is displayed on the display unit 114. And prompts the user to operate the input unit 115 and return a response. Subsequent operations in each terminal 11 differ depending on the situation of the user of the terminal, and will be described separately for each case.

  First, if the user of the terminal 11 thinks that he / she is actively participating in the conference, such as speaking in the conference or listening carefully while listening to the speech of other speakers, In this case, the user of the terminal 11 performs an input operation according to the message (Y in step S104). Then, as a response to the confirmation request, a predetermined confirmation signal is transmitted to the server 10 together with the ID of the user of the terminal 11 (step S106). On the other hand, if the user has not taken a seat and noticed the message even after a predetermined time (for example, 10 seconds), nothing is input (step S104, N). Then, the control part 111 reads a user's schedule data from the memory | storage part 113 (step S108, Y), and produces | generates the message corresponding to the user's action plan in the present time (step S110). For example, if the schedule data indicates that the user is currently out, the message “Away” will be generated, and if the user is scheduled to join this conference, a message “Participating” will be generated. Is transmitted to the server 10 (step S106). If the user's action at the current time is unknown from the schedule data, such as the user's schedule is not input (step S108, N), an “unknown” message is sent to the server 10 (step S108). S106).

  Thus, when the server 10 receives the above-described responses (confirmation signals or messages) from all the terminals 11, the server 10 first identifies the participant (that is, the user of the terminal 11) from the sent ID, and refers to the storage unit 104. Identify the conference in which the user is participating. Then, the participation status of each participant at the time when the response is received is determined and stored in the storage unit 104 as participation status information (step S112). Specifically, when the confirmation signal is received, it is estimated that the user is substantially participating in the conference, so that the participation is confirmed at the current time. FIG. 5 shows an example of the generated participation situation. In the figure, “participation confirmed” is recorded for the participant A at time 14:00. On the other hand, when a message is transmitted instead of a confirmation signal as a response from the terminal 11, the participation status is determined based on the content of the message to generate participation status information. Specifically, it is as follows. If the message transmitted from the terminal 11 is “participating”, the user of this terminal 11 should have participated in the conference by schedule, but the input operation for confirmation was not performed by the user himself / herself. For example, it is estimated that there is a high possibility that the user is not substantially participating in the conference because he / she is in the vicinity of the terminal and is doing other work. Therefore, the fact that “participation unconfirmed” is recorded in the storage unit 104 (participant B in FIG. 5). When the message transmitted from the terminal 11 is “out of seat”, it is presumed that the user cannot participate in the conference due to going out or the like, so that “absence confirmed” is recorded (FIG. 5). Participant C). If the message transmitted from the terminal 11 is “unknown”, the user may not have written his / her schedule on the terminal 11. Since it is in a state where confirmation cannot be taken, the fact that “confirmation is impossible” is recorded (user D in FIG. 5). The generated participation situation is transmitted from the server 10 to all the terminals 11 (step S114). When receiving the participation status, each terminal 11 displays a list of participants and the participation status on the display unit 114. Thereby, each user can grasp | ascertain the participation condition of another participant for every predetermined time interval. Thereby, for example, it is possible to know the fact that the participant has left.

  The above-described process for confirming the participation status is performed at predetermined time intervals from the start of the conference to the end of the conference. For example, if the predetermined interval is 10 minutes and the conference is held from 13: 00 to 16:00, the first confirmation request is transmitted at 13:05, and the confirmation request is transmitted at intervals of 10 minutes thereafter. : Perform up to 55. The user participation status information recorded based on the response to the confirmation request transmitted at the time (for example, 14:05) is representative of the user participation status for 14 minutes before and after that (14: 0 to 14:10). 6 is a time chart showing an example of the participation situation relating to the entire conference of each user obtained in this manner, in which the time zone determined as “confirmed participation”, that is, Only the time periods determined to be substantially participating in the conference are shown.

  Returning to FIG. 4 again, when the conference ends (step S116, Y), the server 10 analyzes the generated participation situation and transmits conference audio data to the terminal 11 as necessary (step S118). Specifically, first, from the obtained participation status information, the ratio of the time period recorded as “participation confirmed” to the duration of the conference (hereinafter referred to as the conference participation rate) is calculated for each participant. . Then, for the participant (participant C in FIG. 6) whose conference participation rate is less than a predetermined value (for example, 75%), the participant is “unconfirmed” or “not confirmed”. The meeting voice data in the time zone determined as is extracted. And the extracted meeting audio | voice data are transmitted to the said terminal 11 with the participating status information of the said participant. In addition, since it is highly possible that participants who have a conference participation rate of 50% or less (participants B and D in FIG. 6) do not understand the flow of the entire conference, In both cases, conference audio data of the entire conference is transmitted. Users who have been recorded as “absence confirmed” or “unconfirmed” may be concerned that they either forgot to hold the meeting or did not understand the importance of the meeting, Along with the minutes of the entire meeting, a message such as “It seems that there was a time when you did not participate in the meeting. You may be asked. In addition, if the sum of the time periods when the conference participation rate of all participants was below a predetermined value (for example, 50%) has reached a predetermined value, there will be doubts about the significance of this conference. You may transmit the message which calls the terminal 11 to hold a meeting again later.

  According to the present embodiment, in a communication held in a form in which the appearance of the participant cannot be visually confirmed, such as a conference held via a network, the communication (conference) of each participant (terminal user) is performed. The substantial participation situation can be grasped every predetermined time zone. Thus, for example, when the chairperson terminal user discovers that there is a terminal user who has not substantially participated, he or she actively calls on the conference by calling out to the user by voice or sending a predetermined message. Encourage participation. Also, for example, if a user who has been determined to be “absence confirmed” continuously for one hour is determined to be “confirmed to participate”, the user knows that he / she participated from the middle. If you have any questions about the contents of the discussion in the last hour, please appoint a chairperson and make a statement to that effect "on the display 114 of the user. You may make it make it. In this way, to raise the awareness of active participation in the conference for participants by grasping the actual participation status of each participant as needed and encouraging active participation in the conference according to the actual participation status. Therefore, activation of the conference and smooth progress of the conference can be realized. In addition, by providing the conference audio data to the user according to the participation situation, it is possible to help the participant understand the content of the conference. In addition, since it is possible to support understanding of the content of the conference in the same manner for participants who are forced to leave the seat, join in the middle, or leave temporarily, the range of participation modes in the conference is expanded.

<Modification>
In the above embodiment, the conference audio data is transmitted to the participants who are considered necessary based on the participation status information accumulated after the conference. However, for example, the participant himself / herself may notice during the conference that the participant lacked concentration in a particular time zone and did not understand the content of the conference during that time zone. Therefore, the participation status information from the start of the conference to the current time is sequentially transmitted from the server 10 to the terminal 11, and the terminal user refers to the participation status information to identify the time zone in which he / she lacked concentration, You may make it request | require the meeting audio | voice data of this time slot | zone with respect to the server 10. FIG. In this case, the participant can obtain conference audio data for the time period from the server 10 without waiting for the end of the conference. It is also possible to reproduce the acquired conference audio data on its own terminal and listen to the content of the conference currently in progress and the content of past utterances at the same time. Of course, you may listen to the contents of past remarks at the break time of the meeting. In this way, especially when the contents of the past meeting are closely related to the contents of the currently ongoing meeting, it helps to understand the contents of the currently ongoing meeting.

  In the above-described embodiment, the server 10 provides the participant status information and the conference audio data to each terminal 11. For example, the server 10 transmits only the terminal 11 of the chairperson user instead of all the terminals 11. May be. In this case, based on the participation status information provided from the server 10, the user who should transfer the participation status information, conference audio data, and the like can be determined based on the judgment of the chairperson user.

  In the above embodiment, when there is no user input operation in the terminal 11, the current user status is provided to the server 10 by referring to the schedule data. May be provided. For example, if the schedule data describes a schedule for the user to rejoin the meeting 30 minutes after the current time, the message “currently away” will be added, and “the schedule will be rejoined after 30 minutes”. A message may be sent. If information on the participation status of future participants can be grasped in this way, for example, the chairperson's user can determine that important agenda items should be discussed after the participants return, so the progress of the conference can be flexibly controlled. It becomes easy to change to.

  In the above embodiment, it is assumed that communication is performed only by voice, but the present invention can also be applied to a conference using audio and video (so-called video conference). This is because there may be a case where it is difficult to determine whether or not the user is actually participating in the conference even though the presence of the user can be visually confirmed only from the video images of the participants.

  In the above embodiment, in order to grasp the user participation status, confirmation requests are transmitted at predetermined time intervals to prompt the user for a predetermined input operation. However, the present invention is not limited to this. For example, when a majority decision is made on the contents of the agenda, each participant is called for voting.

It is a figure which shows the function structure of the conference system 1 concerning the Example of this invention. It is a figure which shows the function structure of the server 10 which comprises the conference system 1. FIG. It is a figure which shows the function structure of the terminal 11 which comprises the conference system 1. It is the flowchart which showed the operation example concerning the Example. It is a figure which shows the participation status information memorize | stored in the memory | storage part. It is a time chart which shows the participation condition of each participant.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Conference system, 10 ... Server, 11A-C ... Terminal, 12 ... Communication network, 101, 111 ... Control part, 102, 112 ... Communication part, 103 ... Timer, 104, 113... Storage unit, 105, 117... Bus, 114... Display unit, 115.

Claims (6)

In a conference system composed of a server and a plurality of terminals used by each user,
A request step in which the server sends a confirmation request to the terminal at predetermined time intervals;
An input request step in which the terminal receives the confirmation request and prompts a user of the terminal to input a response;
If the user does not input even after a predetermined time has elapsed since the terminal received the confirmation request, the user's action schedule information is referred to the user's schedule data stored in the terminal. An extraction step for extracting,
A response step in which the terminal transmits the response input in the input request step or the action schedule information extracted in the extraction step to the server;
A determination step in which the server receives the response, determines the participation status of the user in the conference based on the received response, and records it as participation status information;
A meeting management support method. A voice recording step in which the server records the content of the speech in the conference as voice data sequentially;
A calculation step in which the server accumulates participation status information recorded in the determination step a predetermined number of times to calculate a participation rate of the user in the conference;
A specifying step in which the server specifies a user whose participation rate calculated in the calculating step is a predetermined value or less;
A data providing step in which the server provides the voice data recorded in the voice recording step to a user terminal identified in the identifying step;
The conference management support method according to claim 1, further comprising: The conference operation support method according to claim 1, wherein the audio data provided in the providing step includes only the content of a conference in a time zone in which the user did not participate in the conference. A server that manages a conference held using a plurality of terminals,
Transmitting means for transmitting confirmation requests to the terminal at predetermined time intervals;
Receiving means for receiving a response from the terminal;
Based on the response received by the receiving means, a determining means for determining the participation status of the user in the conference;
Recording means for recording the participation status determined by the determination means as participation status information;
Server with. Voice recording means for sequentially recording speech content in the meeting as voice data;
Calculating means for calculating a participation rate of the user based on participation status information recorded by the recording means;
A specifying means for specifying a user whose participation rate calculated by the calculating means is a predetermined value or less;
Providing means for providing the voice data recorded by the voice recording means to the terminal of the user specified by the specifying means;
The server according to claim 4, further comprising: A terminal used in a conference conducted via a communication network and having a voice communication function,
Storage means for storing schedule data of the user of the terminal;
Request receiving means for receiving a confirmation request via the communication network;
An operator for causing the user to input a response;
An extraction means for reading out the schedule data from the storage means and extracting the action schedule information of the user when the user's input is not made even after a predetermined time has elapsed since the confirmation request was received;
A transmission means for transmitting the response input using the operation element or the action schedule information extracted by the extraction means via the communication network;
A terminal having

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