Providing personalized greetings on a digital assistant

• US 10,038,757 B2
• Filed: 06/23/2015
• Issued: 07/31/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 04/29/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Madiraju, Sasanka, Almadhoun, Ayman Farouq Mohammad, Kamdar, Nirav Ashwin, Ireland, Talon Edward, Lim, Melissa Nicole, Aranke, Ravikiran Arun, Maritan, Catherine Lynn, Klein, Tudor Buzasu
• Primary Examiner(s): Aspinwall, Evan
• Application Number:
  US14/747,941
• Publication Number:
  US 20160321263A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,134 Days
• Field of Search: 707732
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2457 with adaptation to user needs
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

Methods and systems are provided for generating personalized greetings for presentation by a personal digital assistant on a client device. An indication is received from the client device associated with the user that the personal digital assistant has been launched on the client device. User-specific information and contextual information is retrieved by querying a user profile database and one or more services. A personalized greeting engine utilizes the user-specific information, such as user inferences and interests, and the contextual information to generate the personalized greetings for presentation by the digital assistant on the client device.

Claims

1. A system for generating personalized greetings for presentation by a personal digital assistant on a client device, the system comprising:

a personalized greetings engine having one or more processors and one or more computer-readable storage media, the personalized greetings engine configured to;

receive an indication that a user of a client device has launched the digital assistant on the client device,

retrieve user-specific information and contextual information corresponding to the user by,

(1) querying a user profile database for the user-specific information, and

(2) querying one or more services for the contextual information corresponding to the user,

using the contextual information corresponding to the user to determine a type of personalized greeting to generate, and

based on the determined type of personalized greeting, generate one or more personalized greetings for presentation by the digital assistant on the client device, wherein the personalized greetings engine generates the one or more personalized greetings based on at least one of the user-specific information or the contextual information; and

a server having one or more processors and one or more computer-readable storage media, the server configured to;

communicate a request for the one or more personalized greetings from the client device to the personalized greetings engine, and

coordinate with at least one other client device that is associated with the user to determine that the type of personalized greeting to be generated has not already been generated for presentation by the digital assistant on the client device within a preceding particular time period, wherein the server communicates with the client device and the at least one other client device.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the user profile database stores the user-specific information.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more services generate the contextual information corresponding to the user.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the personalized greetings engine comprises a greetings ranker that ranks the one or more personalized greetings.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the greetings ranker generates a ranked set of personalized greetings.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the personalized greetings engine is further configured to communicate the ranked set of personalized greetings to the client device for presentation to the user by the digital assistant.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein generating the personalized greeting further comprises:

determining an event associated with the at least one of the user-specific information or the contextual information; and

incorporating information associated with the event into a pre-created template.

8. One or more computer storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform a method for generating personalized greetings for presentation by a personal digital assistant on a client device, the method comprising:

at a server, receiving an indication from the client device associated with a user that the user has launched the digital assistant on the client device;

retrieving user-specific information and contextual information corresponding to the user by,

(1) querying a user profile database for the user-specific information, and

(2) querying one or more services for the contextual information corresponding to the user;

using the contextual information corresponding to the user, determining a type of personalized greeting to generate;

coordinating with at least one other client device that is associated with the user to determine that the type of personalized greeting to be generated has not already been generated for presentation by the digital assistant on the client device within a preceding particular time period, wherein the server communicates with the client device and the at least one other client device;

communicating a request for the a personalized greeting from the client device to a personalized greetings engine; and

by way of the personalized greetings engine and based on the determined type of personalized greeting, generating the personalized greeting that is presented by the digital assistant on the client device, wherein the personalized greetings engine generates the personalized greeting based further on one or more of the user-specific information or the contextual information.

9. The media of claim 8, wherein the user-specific information comprises inferences and interests of the user.

10. The media of claim 8, wherein the contextual information is data corresponding to out of the ordinary events that the user is experiencing.

11. The media of claim 8, wherein the client device is a first client device, and wherein the user is also associated with a second client device.

12. The media of claim 11, wherein the first client device and the second client device coordinate amongst each other to provide a variation of personalized greetings to the user.

13. The media of claim 11, wherein the personalized greetings engine coordinates with the first client device and the second client device to provide a variation of personalized greetings to the user.

14. The media of claim 8, wherein the personalized greeting generated by the personalized greeting engine is a combination of two individual personalized greetings.

15. A computer-implemented method for generating a personalized greeting presented by a digital assistant on a client device, the method comprising:

receiving, at a personalized greetings engine, a request to generate one or more personalized greetings that are unique to a user of the client device, where the user has launched the digital assistant on the client device;

querying a user profile database to retrieve user-specific information;

querying one or more services to retrieve contextual information that corresponds to an event associated with the user;

determining a type of personalized greeting to generate based on the contextual information;

at a server in communication with the personalized greetings engine and the client device, coordinating with at least one other client device that is associated with the user to determine that the type of personalized greeting to be generated has not already been generated for presentation by the digital assistant on the client device within a preceding particular time period, wherein the server communicates with the client device and the at least one other client device;

by way of the personalized greetings engine and based on the determined type of personalized greeting, generating the one or more personalized greetings, where at least one of the one or more personalized greetings is presented to the user by the digital assistant on the client device;

ranking the one or more personalized greetings generated by the personalized greetings engine; and

communicating a ranked set of personalized greetings to the client device.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the client device also ranks the ranked set of personalized greetings communicated by the personalized greetings engine based on user information known by the client device.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein at least one of the one or more personalized greetings is provided by a third party application based on user context acquired by the third party application.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the client device utilizes the ranked set of personalized greetings without having to communicate subsequent requests to the personalized greetings engine until the ranked set of personalized greetings has expired.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein each personalized greeting of the ranked set of personalized greetings has a corresponding expiration date, after which the client device does not present the personalized greeting that has expired to the user.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein the event is one or more of a sporting event, an event on the user'"'"'s calendar, a geographic location of the client device that is different than the user'"'"'s home location, a weather event, or a birthday.