1. A computer-implemented communications system, comprising: a processing unit; a meeting component of a communications application executing on the processing unit for selecting a meeting from multiple meetings during one or more communications sessions; a conversation component of the communications application for managing multiple conversation threads during the one or more communications sessions; a monitor component for detecting a recovery event, the recovery event comprising an event that causes failure of an application program associated with at least one of the multiple conversation threads during the one or more communications sessions; and a recovery component of the communications application for recovering the meeting from the multiple meetings in response to the recovery event, wherein each conversation thread in the multiple conversation threads of the meeting includes a history communications item or a persistent communications item, the recovery component further operative to establish a new active communications session by converting the history communications item or the persistent communications item or a combination of the history communications item and the persistent communications item into a new communications session.