Patent attributes
The technology described herein manages communications received by a mobile computing device by ascertaining a user's availability to receive an incoming communication. The technology described herein can optimize the use of notification resources on a computing device to provide notifications only when a user is available to respond to a communication the notification announces. The user's availability to receive a communication can be inferred through the analysis of signal data that describes a present context of the mobile device and/or the mobile device's user. Upon determining a present level of availability, the technology described herein can take several different actions. The actions include generating an alternative notification for a newly received communication, generating no notification for a newly received communication, and communicating an automated “not available” message to the originator of a newly received communication.