NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERFACE FOR COLLABORATIVE EVENT SCHEDULING

• US 20100318398A1
• Filed: 06/15/2009
• Published: 12/16/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/15/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Hagege, Caroline, Brun, Caroline
• Application Number:
  US12/484,569
• Publication Number:
  US 20100318398A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/103 Workflow collaboration or project management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1093 Calendar-based scheduling for persons or groups

Abstract

A collaborative event scheduling method and system are provided which allow participants and an event initiator to interact with a scheduler in a natural language form. Participants provide a respective availability announcement, which is processed to generate a representation of the user'"'"'s availability within a time window specified for the event by the initiator. This includes extracting a temporal expression from the availability announcement, normalizing, if the temporal expression is determined to be referential, identifying an availability modality for each extracted temporal expression from a set of availability modalities. The generated representation is output for establishing a suitable time for the event within the time window based on the availability announcements of the participants.

Claims

1. A collaborative event scheduling method comprising:

for each of a plurality of users;

receiving a user'"'"'s availability announcement in a natural language in response to a collaborative event scheduling request for which a time for an event is to be established within a time window defined by an event initiator, based on the users'"'"' availability announcements;

based on the availability announcement, with a computer processor, generating a representation of the user'"'"'s availability within the time window, including;

extracting a temporal expression from the availability announcement;

if the temporal expression is determined to be referential, normalizing the extracted temporal expression;

identifying an availability modality for each extracted temporal expression from a set of availability modalities; and

generating the representation based on the normalized temporal expression and availability modality; and

outputting the generated representation to an event scheduler for establishing a suitable time for the event within the time window based on the availability announcements of the plurality of users.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the generation of the representation further includes, for each identified temporal expression, assigning an expression type to the expression selected from a predetermined set of expression types.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the expression types include absolute dates, referential dates, durations, intervals, and frequencies.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the availability modality is selected from an available modality and an unavailable modality.

5. The method of claim 1, identifying a granularity of a time period identified in the extracted temporal expression.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the granularity is selected from the group consisting of hours, days, weeks, months, and combinations thereof.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising parsing the availability announcement with a parser which applies grammar rules to identify words in the availability announcement.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the parsing includes accessing a lexicon which stores a set of words which are indexed as event words, whereby the user'"'"'s availability announcement is associable with the event.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the normalization of the temporal expression is based on at least one of the time window and a time at which the response was submitted by the user.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the normalization of the temporal expression wherein the normalization of the temporal expression assumes that all temporal expressions relate to future time periods.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying of an availability modality includes extracting an availability expression associated with the temporal expression and determining an availability modality based on the availability expression.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the availability announcement comprises at least one of a spoken availability announcement and a text availability announcement.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving an event scheduling request in natural language from the event initiator; and

natural language processing of the event scheduling request to identify the event, a time window in which the event is to occur, and a granularity of a time period for the event.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

instantiating a scheduler based on the event, time window, and time period granularity for the event.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising, with the scheduler, identifying a most popular time period for the event and outputting the most popular time period.

16. A computer program product encoding instructions which when executed by a computer, perform the method of claim 1.

17. A collaborative event scheduling system comprising:

computer readable memory which stores instructions for performing the method of claim 1 and a processor in communication with the memory which executes the instructions.

18. A collaborative event scheduling system comprising:

computer readable memory which stores instructions for;

receiving a user'"'"'s availability announcement in a natural language to a collaborative event scheduling request for which a time for the event is to be established within a time window defined by an event initiator;

based on the availability announcement, generating a representation of the user'"'"'s availability within the time window in a format understandable to an associated scheduler, including;

identifying a temporal expression in the response;

normalizing the temporal expression in relation to the time period;

identifying an availability modality associated with each identified temporal expression; and

generating the representation based on the normalized temporal expression and availability modality; and

outputting the representation to an associated scheduler; and

a processor in communication with the memory which executes the instructions.

19. The collaborative event scheduling system of claim 18, wherein the instructions for generation of the representation further include, for each identified temporal expression, instructions for assigning an expression type to the expression selected from a predetermined set of expression types.

20. A collaborative event scheduling method comprising:

receiving an event scheduling request in a natural language form which includes an event for which a time period is to be established within a specified time window;

processing the event scheduling request to identify the time window and a granularity of time periods within the time window;

receiving availability announcements from a plurality of invited participants, each availability announcement expressing, in a natural language, the respected participant'"'"'s availability for the event;

based on the availability announcements, with a computer processor, generating a representation of each participant'"'"'s availability within the time window, including;

extracting a temporal expression from the availability announcement; and

identifying an availability modality for each extracted temporal expression from a set of availability modalities; and

outputting a suitable time period for the event within the time window based on the extracted temporal expressions and identified availability modalities for the participants.