Related actions server

• US 20080052274A1
• Filed: 08/25/2006
• Published: 02/28/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/25/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Moore, Dennis B., Beringer, Joerg
• Granted Patent: US 7,853,607 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/289 Object oriented databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

Methods and apparatuses enable providing an action related to a business object in response to receiving a request to access the business object. In one embodiment, a related action is identified based on a context of a work environment from which the request is generated. The context may include a business role of the requester, a type of the requested object, a specific instance of the object, a relationship of the requester to the specific instance, a channel from which the request is received, etc. The identified related action is provided to a consumer of the business object.

Claims

1. A method for providing content to a data object consumer, comprising:

receiving a request for a data object;

identifying, in response to receiving the request, an action of a business process related to the data object; and

providing as a suggestion, access to the identified action in response to the request.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the request further comprises:

receiving a search query for an object having specified parameters; and

identifying the data object having parameters that statistically match the specified parameters, in response to receiving the search query.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the request comprises:

determining that a software application of a work environment requests access to the data object.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the action of the business process comprises:

identifying the action of the business process based on a context of the request.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the action of the business process based on the context of the request further comprises:

identifying the action based on relatedness metadata stored with the data object that indicates a relationship of the business object to the action.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the action of the business process based on the context of the request further comprises:

identifying the action based on relatedness data stored in a relatedness database.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the action of the business process based on the context of the request further comprises:

identifying the action based on a relationship of a requestor that generated the request to a specific instance of the data object.

8. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the action of the business process based on the context of the request further comprises:

identifying the action based on a role of a requestor that generated the request.

9. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the action of the business process based on the context of the request further comprises:

identifying the action based on a type of the data object.

10. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the action of the business process based on the context of the request further comprises:

identifying the action based on a characteristic of a specific instance of the data object.

11. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the action of the business process based on the context of the request further comprises:

identifying the action based on a work environment context from which the request was generated.

12. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the action of the business process based on the context of the request further comprises:

determining a channel from which the request was received; and

identifying the action based on determined channel.

13. An article of manufacture comprising a machine readable medium having content stored thereon to provide instructions to cause a device to perform operations, including:

identifying a data object of a work environment;

accessing relationship metadata associated with the data object;

identifying an action of a business process indicated in the relationship metadata, based on a context of the work environment; and

providing access to the identified action to a consumer of the data object in the work environment.

14. The article of manufacture of claim 13, wherein the content to provide instructions for identifying the data object of the work environment comprises content to provide instructions for:

identifying a data object generated as a search result in response to a search query.

15. The article of manufacture of claim 13, wherein the content to provide instructions for identifying the action based on the context of the work environment comprises content to provide instructions for:

identifying the action based on at least one of a business role of a requestor, a type of the data object, a relationship of an instance of the data object to a requester, and a source channel of the request.

16. A related actions server comprising:

an object identifier to identify a data object requested from a within a work environment;

an action identification module to provide an action related to the identified data object; and

an action suggestion module to present the action within the work environment to provide access to the action to a consumer of the data object.

17. The related actions server of claim 16, further comprising:

a context determination module to determine a context of the work environment associated with the identified data object;

wherein the action identification module is to further provide the action related to the identified data object based on the determined context.

18. The related actions server of claim 17, wherein the context determination module determines the context of the work environment to be at least one of a business role of a requestor, a type of the data object, a relationship of an instance of the data object to a requester, and a source channel of the request.