IM --> Pager ?

One of the many things I don't know is, how does Instant Messaging actually work.

Normally, I don't care, because I don't use it that much (though this article, Adoption of Instant Messaging in a Knowledge Worker Organisation, was kind of interesting, and agrees with the little bit I've read on the topic). But lately I've found myself thinking that it would be nice if I could get Lotus Sametime, which is the IM tool that my company, The Biggest Computer Company In The World, uses, to issue pages to me.

The reason is, sometimes when I am working from home, I will wander off into another room, for whatever reason, and when the ST pops up a screen, I won't always hear the chime. As ST is usually taken as an indicator of whether you truly are there, and as there is occasionally a suspicion that people working from home are actually downstairs watching the tube, taking a nap, or painting the shutters, I like to respond to it quickly. I always feel a little nettled when I come back into the room and the screen is up for, who knows how long. If ST would issue a page when its been up for, say, thirty seconds without a response, that would be nice.

ST has a companion tool called NotesBuddy that works with Lotus Notes, and which can, in its bag of tricks, be used to page you with new emails. Since I don't personally have to work out the linkage, its easy for me to think well, heck, how hard can it be to make SameTime, which after all comes from the very same company as Notes, talk to NotesBuddy (those who like groaner names can see this one coming: the new product could be called SameBuddy)?

Okay, probably not that easy. But still....
Someone starts a session to my ST client, which pops up a screen and starts a timer.
Thirty seconds later the timer pops. Gee, no response in thirty seconds.
Issues the page with the text message "Hey, get back to the screen!" and maybe even sends a message back to the original sender "NO RESPONSE; PAGING NOW"

How hard can that be? Huh?