Annotations management for electronic documents handling

• US 10,089,288 B2
• Filed: 12/04/2015
• Issued: 10/02/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 12/04/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Klima, Kristian
• Primary Examiner(s): Cortes, Howard
• Application Number:
  US14/959,548
• Publication Number:
  US 20170161246A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,033 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/263 Language identification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation

Abstract

Embodiments are directed to providing a graphical interface for annotating an electronic document, receiving, from a user, an annotation to the electronic document via the interface, associating the annotation to the electronic document with a annotation identifier, the annotation identifier comprising a credential associated with the user, a unique identifier for the electronic document, and metadata associated with the electronic document, and storing the annotation with the annotation identifier.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method comprising:

providing a graphical interface for annotating an electronic document;

receiving, from a first user, a first annotation to the electronic document via the interface;

associating the first annotation to the electronic document with a first cluster identifier, the first cluster identifier comprising a credential associated with the user, a unique identifier for the electronic document, and metadata associated with the electronic document, wherein the metadata comprises a first version number for the electronic document, the first cluster identifier further comprising a first language identifier indicating a first language of the electronic document; and

storing the annotation with the first cluster identifier;

the method further comprising;

receiving a second annotation associated with the electronic document, the second annotation comprising a second cluster identifier, the second cluster identifier comprising a second language identifier indicating a second language of the electronic document, and metadata indicating a second version number of the electronic document, the second version number greater than the first version number;

determining that the first annotation is applicable to the second version number of the electronic document; and

synchronizing electronic documents that are associated with the second version number with the first annotation;

the method further comprising;

determining, from the first cluster identifier, that the first annotation is in a first language based on the first language identifier;

determining from the second cluster identifier, that the second annotation is in a second language based on the second language identifier, the second language different from the first language;

determining, based on the second cluster identifier, a language of a version of the electronic document associated with the second version number of the electronic document; and

translating the first annotation into the language of the version of the electronic document associated with the second version number of the electronic document.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the associating the electronic document with metadata associated with the electronic document comprises:

identifying a location in the electronic document associated with the annotation received from the user; and

wherein associating the annotation to the electronic document with metadata associated with the electronic document comprises associating the annotation with an identifier of the location of the electronic document associated with the annotation.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the metadata associated with the electronic document comprises a version number, a page number of the electronic document, a section number of the electronic document, a chapter number of the electronic document, a paragraph number of the electronic document, a line number of the electronic document, a string of text from the electronic document, a figure number from the electronic document, or a table number from the electronic document,

wherein the cluster identifier comprises the metadata associated with the electronic document.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the credentials associated with the user comprise one of a user login, a user e-mail address, a user account number, or unique identifier.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising distributing the annotation with the cluster identifier to another user.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying a location in the first version of the electronic document for the annotation based, at least in part, on the metadata in the cluster identifier;

identifying a corresponding location in a local version of the electronic document; and

displaying the annotation in the corresponding location of the local version of the electronic document.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the corresponding location of the local version of the electronic document is different than the location in the first version of the electronic document.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein a local version of the electronic document is in a different language from the first version of the electronic document.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

identifying a location in the first version of the electronic document for the annotation based at least in part on organizational information in the metadata in the annotation identifier; and

identifying a corresponding location in the local version of the electronic document based on the organizational information.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the organizational information comprises a page number of the electronic document, a section number of the electronic document, a chapter number of the electronic document, a paragraph number of the electronic document, a line number of the electronic document, a string of text from the electronic document, a figure number from the electronic document, or a table number from the electronic document;

wherein the annotation identifier comprises the organizational information.

11. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

identifying the language of the first version of the electronic document based, at least in part, on a language identifier in the metadata in the annotation identifier;

identifying the language of the local version of the electronic document; and

translating the language of the first version to the language of the local version.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein translating the language of the first version to the language of the local version comprising requesting a translation from a network translation service.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing the annotation of the first version of the electronic document based, at least in part, on the annotation identifier.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein storing the annotation of the first version of the electronic document comprises storing the annotation based on any one of the credentials associated with an author of the annotation, the unique identifier for the electronic document, or the metadata associated with the electronic document.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having program instructions stored therein, wherein the program instructions are executable by a computer system to perform operations comprising:

providing a graphical interface for annotating an electronic document;

receiving, from a first user, a first annotation to the electronic document via the interface;

associating the first annotation to the electronic document with a first cluster identifier, the first cluster identifier comprising a credential associated with the user, a unique identifier for the electronic document, a first language identifier indicating a language of the electronic document, and metadata associated with the electronic document, wherein the metadata comprises a first version number for the electronic document; and

storing the annotation with the first cluster identifier;

the method further comprising;

receiving a second annotation associated with the electronic document, the second annotation comprising a second cluster identifier, the second cluster identifier comprising a second language identifier indicating a second language of the electronic document, and metadata indicating a second version number of the electronic document, the second version number greater than the first version number;

determining that the first annotation is applicable to the second version number of the electronic document; and

synchronizing electronic documents that are associated with the second version number with the first annotation;

the method further comprising;

determining, from the first cluster identifier, that the first annotation is in a first language based on the first language identifier;

determining from the second cluster identifier, that the second annotation is in a second language based on the second language identifier, the second language different from the first language;

determining, based on the second cluster identifier, a language of a version of the electronic document associated with the second version number of the electronic document; and

translating the first annotation into the language of the version of the electronic document associated with the second version number of the electronic document.

16. A system comprising:

a processor implemented at least in hardware;

a repository for storing annotation data; and

an annotation engine implemented at least in part in hardware to;

provide a graphical interface for annotating an electronic document;

receive, from a first user, a first annotation to the electronic document via the interface;

associate the first annotation to the electronic document with a first cluster identifier, the first cluster identifier comprising a credential associated with the user, a unique identifier for the electronic document, a first language identifier indicating a language of the electronic document, and metadata associated with the electronic document, wherein the metadata comprises a first version number for the electronic document; and

storing the annotation with the first cluster identifier;

the annotation further to;

receive a second annotation associated with the electronic document, the second annotation comprising a second cluster identifier, the second cluster identifier comprising a second language identifier indicating a second language of the electronic document, and metadata indicating a second version number of the electronic document, the second version number greater than the first version number;

determine that the first annotation is applicable to the second version number of the electronic document; and

synchronize electronic documents that are associated with the second version number with the first annotation;

the annotation engine further to;

determine, from the first cluster identifier, that the first annotation is in a first language based on the first language identifier;

determine from the second cluster identifier, that the second annotation is in a second language based on the second language identifier, the second language different from the first language;

determine, from the second cluster identifier, a language of a version of the electronic document associated with the second version number of the electronic document; and

translate the first annotation into the language of the version of the electronic document associated with the second version number of the electronic document.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the system further comprises an annotation engine to store the annotation in a database in the repository and associate the annotation in the database with one of the annotation identifier, the credentials associated with an author of the annotation, the unique identifier for the electronic document, or the metadata associated with the electronic document.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the system further comprises an annotation engine to:

receive a search query for an annotation based on one of the annotation identifier, the credentials associated with an author of the annotation, the unique identifier for the electronic document, or the metadata associated with the electronic document;

identifying the annotation based on the search query; and

return the identified annotation.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the system further comprises an annotation engine to:

receive a request to sort annotations stored in the repository based on one of the annotation identifier, the credentials associated with an author of the annotation, the unique identifier for the electronic document, or the metadata associated with the electronic document;

sorting annotations in the repository based on the request.