Importance

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Abstract

An automated scheduling system schedules audio conferences for an audio conferencing system. The scheduling of an audio conference results in the reservation of audio conferencing resources for a designated time frame. The automated scheduling system identifies what audio conferencing resources are available during the designated time frame and then chooses optimal ones of the audio conferencing resources to achieve load balancing and to prevent overflow of an audio conference between conferencing bridges. A scoring mechanism may be applied to identify the optimal audio conferencing resources for a given audio conference. The automated scheduling system is capable of operating in real-time so that a caller that requests the scheduling of an audio conference may receive confirmation and a phone number to call to participate in the audio conference during a single phone call. The automated scheduling system may also schedule a recurring series of audio conferences that occur at periodic intervals with common participants.

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First Claim