Patent 7599473 was granted and assigned to Siemens Communications on October, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A voice message system utilizes presence status information obtained from a presence server in playing inbox greeting to incoming callers. The presence status can indicate the actual presence or availability of the called user and is thus dynamic in nature. By using a voice message system to reflect and relay the presence status, the presence status information can be heard by those devices which do not have the capability to display presence information.