System and method for managing documents with expression of dates and/or times

• US 20050149858A1
• Filed: 12/29/2003
• Published: 07/07/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2003
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Stern, Mia K., Gruen, Daniel M., Kerr, Bernard J., Patterson, John
• Application Number:
  US10/745,484
• Publication Number:
  US 20050149858A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/255
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/295 Named entity recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting

Abstract

An apparatus and method identifies, handles, and/or searches for email messages that include references to dates and/or times, regardless of the syntax or context in which the dates and/or times are expressed in the document. Each incoming document is searched for date-time expressions which may be converted into a canonically formatted date and stored for subsequent comparison to other date-time expressions. In some embodiments of the invention, a mechanism is provided for creating a calendar event from the date-time expression in the document. In some embodiments of the invention, a calendar icon indicates whether a document includes a date-time expression. In some embodiments of the invention, documents that include a date-time expression corresponding to a particular date may be retrieved.

Claims

1. A method for identifying expressions of at least one of dates and times in documents comprising:

identifying at least one date-time expression in a document;

converting said at least one date-time expression into a canonically formatted date-time; and

storing said canonically formatted date-time in a database.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

presenting the document to the user with the date-time expression highlighted.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

presenting information associated with the document to the user via a graphical user interface, the information including indicia indicating that the document includes the date-time expression.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein said indicia comprises highlighting the information.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein said indicia comprises an icon.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

in response to the user hovering over said icon, presenting the user with the date-time expression included in the document.

7. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

in response to the user selecting the date-time expression, providing a graphical user interface to the user, the graphical user interface associated with a calendar event for the date-time expression.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

automatically populating one or more fields in the graphical user interface associated with the calendar event with at least one of date information and time information associated with the date-time expression.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

causing the calendar event to be created in a calendaring system.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing a reference with the canonically formatted date-time, the reference indicating a relationship between the canonically formatted date-time and at least one of the document and the date-time expression.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a selected date from the user;

converting the selected date into a canonically formatted date-time;

determining whether the canonically formatted date-time corresponding to the selected date matches one or more of the canonically formatted date-times stored in the database.

12. A system for identifying and presenting expressions of at least one of dates and times in documents comprising:

a processing module, operable with a document management system, that identifies at least one date-time expression in a document managed by the document management system, wherein the date-time expression is not otherwise associated with a calendaring system; and

a graphical user interface, operable with at least said processing module, that presents said document with indicia identifying said document as including the date-time expression.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein said processing module identifies a plurality of date-time expressions in the document.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein said processing module identifies one or more date-time expressions in each of a plurality of documents.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein said graphical user interface presents a list of documents, said list of documents including said plurality of documents having one or more date-time expressions therein, each of said plurality of documents having indicia identifying it as including the date-time expression.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein said processing module receives a selection from a user with regard to one of said plurality of documents and causes a calendar event associated with the date-time expression included in the one of said plurality of documents to be created, said calendar event associated with the calendaring system.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein said processing module populates a graphical user interface associated with the calendar event with at least one of date and time information based on the date-time expression.

18. The system of claim 12, further comprising a search module that compares one or more search terms provided by a user with the date-time expression included in the document, said search terms expressing at least one of date and time information.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the date-time expression included in the document is converted into a first canonically formatted date-time, wherein the one or more search terms are converted into a second canonically formatted date-time, and wherein said search module compares said first canonically formatted date-time with said second canonically formatted date-time to determine whether they pertain to at least a same date.