Importance

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Abstract

An interactive telephone answering system (20) connectable to a captured telephone line (26) is responsive to the detection (32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42) of tones transmitted by the calling party from the keypad of a Touch-Tone phone for enabling caller selectable routing of an incoming call to a desired receiving phone (110) in accordance with a verbally interactive prerecorded decision tree format. The various selectable decision trees are prerecorded on a multitrack endless loop tape for playback (60, 62) of the channels selected (52, 54, 56, 58) by the calling party with the ultimate branches thereof each having a prerecorded arming signal which, when detected, activates the appropriate relay (50) to connect the caller to the desired telephone extension. The receiving party may also screen calls or have calls forwarded to another number by use of prerecorded codes on the tape. The decision tree format of the prerecorded messages is based on the recording of each channel in a specially created time sequenced manner enabling the user to provide tailored interactive answering of a telephone.

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First Claim