Enterprise Search Method and System

• US 20100228711A1
• Filed: 02/24/2009
• Published: 09/09/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/24/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Cui, Xiaoyuan, Hu, Yunhua, Poznanski, Victor, Meyerzon, Dmitriy, Li, Hang, Zou, Xin, Gao, Guangping
• Granted Patent: US 9,639,609 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/706
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24575 using context
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results

Abstract

A system and method for enterprise search includes one or more computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed on one or more processors that perform acts including extracting one or more of term data, personal data and metadata from one or more predetermined resources; retrieving a set of information derived from the extracted term data, personal data and metadata responsive to a query; and receiving feedback responsive to the set of information, the feedback augmenting at least one of the one or more predetermined resources.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed on one or more processors, perform acts comprising:

extracting one or more of term data, personal data and metadata from one or more predetermined resources;

retrieving a set of information derived from the extracted term data, personal data and metadata responsive to a query; and

receiving feedback responsive to the set of information, the feedback augmenting at least one of the one or more predetermined resources.

2. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for performing acts including extracting one or more of term data, personal data and metadata from one or more predetermined resources further perform acts including:

extracting the term data, personal data and metadata from the one or more predetermined resources including an active directory resource, an intranet resource and a term resource.

3. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 2, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for performing acts including extracting the term data, personal data and metadata from the one or more predetermined resources including an active directory resource, an intranet resource and a term resource further perform acts including:

receiving data from a user feedback database.

4. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for extracting one or more of term data, personal data and metadata from one or more predetermined resources is further configured for:

organizing the term data, personal data and the metadata using machine learning and/or data mining.

5. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for extracting one or more of term data, personal data and metadata from one or more predetermined resources is further configured for:

extracting one or more question and answer pairs from the one or more predetermined resources; and

organizing the one or more answer pairs in a database table of FAQ data.

6. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for retrieving a set of information derived from the extracted term data, personal data and metadata responsive to a query is further configured for:

responding to the query by organizing the set of information into a FAQ format and/or a document format.

7. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for retrieving a set of information derived from the extracted term data, personal data and metadata responsive to a query includes organizing the set of information into one or more sections according to the predetermined resource associated with the retrieved set of information.

8. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for retrieving a set of information derived from the extracted term data, personal data and metadata responsive to a query is further configured for:

retrieving the set of information responsive to the query as an organized search of an enterprise.

9. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for receiving feedback responsive to the set of information, the feedback augmenting at least one of the one or more predetermined resources is further configured for:

receiving feedback indicative of a quality of the set of information.

10. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for receiving feedback responsive to the set of information, the feedback augmenting at least one of the one or more predetermined resources is further configured for:

receiving the feedback as one or more of a correction to the set of information, a vote associated with the set of information and/or an addition to the set of information.

11. The one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more computer-executable instructions configured for receiving feedback responsive to the set of information, the feedback augmenting at least one of the one or more predetermined resources is further configured for:

enabling a collaborative interface for the feedback, the collaborative interface enabling one or more users to edit, delete, modify and/or replace the set of information.

12. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components comprising:

an enterprise search user interface for receiving a query to perform an enterprise search;

an online search module configured to respond to the query, the online search module including an organized search module for providing an organized search result responsive to the query and a wiki search module for providing a search result including user feedback;

a knowledge database coupled to the online search module, the knowledge database for providing a set of information searchable by the online search module; and

a user feedback database coupled to the online search module, the user feedback database configured to store user feedback received by the enterprise search user interface.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 12 having computer-executable components further comprising:

an offline extraction module coupled to the knowledge database and to the user feedback database, the offline extraction module for extracting at least metadata, terms, and frequently asked questions (FAQs).

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 having computer-executable components further comprising:

a personal information resource database coupled to the offline extraction module, the personal information resource database including data extracted from an enterprise personal information source;

an intranet source coupled to the offline extraction module, the intranet source for providing documents to be extracted for data; and

a term resource database coupled to the offline extraction module, the term resource database and to the user feedback database, the term resource database for receiving user feedback and term information data extracted from one or more sources.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 having computer-executable components wherein the knowledge database includes a metadata database, the metadata database configured to store metadata derived from documents including one or more of title, author and date extracted data by the offline extraction module.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 having computer-executable components wherein the offline extraction module includes:

a homepage extraction module configured to extract homepage data using a uniform resource locator (URL)

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 having computer-executable components wherein the offline extraction module generates frequently asked question (FAQ) data via received text data derived from documents, and webpage documents.

18. A method for generating one or more frequently asked questions (FAQ)s responsive to a query, the method comprising:

determining one or more candidate FAQ documents by locating at least one of “

faq”

in a universal resource locator (URL), “

faq”

in a title, “

Frequently Asked Questions”

in a title, “

help”

in a URL, and “

help”

in a title;

extracting one or more question and answer pairs from the one or more candidate FAQ documents by

locating, for each candidate FAQ document, one or more question words;

locating, for each candidate FAQ document, one or more question marks;

locating, for each candidate FAQ document, one or more representations of “

Q”

;

locating, for each candidate FAQ document, an integer identifier; and

generating the FAQ according to a function of the number of located question words, question marks, “

Q”

'"'"'s and integer identifiers.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the generating the FAQ according to a function of the number of located question words, question marks, “

Q”

'"'"'s and integer identifiers further includes;

ranking the one or more FAQs responsive to the query.

20. The method of claim 18 wherein the generating the FAQ according to a function of the number of located question words, question marks, “

Q”

'"'"'s and integer identifiers further includes;

providing user feedback related to the one or more FAQs from a prior query;

AND

enabling a user to provide feedback related to the one or more FAQs via a user interface.