METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING AN ADAPTIVE INPUT USER INTERFACE FOR DATA ENTRY APPLICATIONS

• US 20110214067A1
• Filed: 12/28/2010
• Published: 09/01/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/01/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Inventors: Tanaka, Jamison M.
• Granted Patent: US 9,405,426 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/745
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0481 based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging

Abstract

Embodiments are described for a system and method for adapting an online user input form that provides user input to a web-based application. A method comprises defining one or more attributes related to one or more fields of the online user input form, obtaining historical data comprising past user input to related user input forms, calculating historical most common values for each attribute of the one or more attributes; and modifying the one or more fields of the online user input form in accordance with the calculated historical average values. The attributes may include at least one of the size, location, and datatype of each field of the form. The method may be implemented through an application programming interface for implementation through server-side and client-side processes that are written in a web-browser compatible markup language.

Claims

1. A method of adapting an online user input form providing user input to a web-based application, the method comprising:

defining one or more attributes related to one or more fields of the online user input form;

obtaining historical data comprising past user input to related user input forms;

calculating historical most common entry values for each attribute of the one or more attributes; and

modifying the one or more fields of the online user input form in accordance with the calculated historical average values.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more attributes comprise at least one of a size of each field of the one or more fields, a location within the online user input form of each field of the one or more fields, and a datatype associated with each field of the one or more fields.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the datatypes are selected from the group consisting of pure alpha text, pure numeric text, mixed alphanumeric text, and binary input data.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the size of each field is modified by adding allocated space to a field if the historic data indicates that a current size of the field is too short, and deleting at least some allocated space from a field if the historic data indicates that the current size of the field is too long.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the location of a field within the online user input form is modified by moving the field higher or lower within the online user input form relative to the other fields within the online user input based on a relative importance value calculated from the historical most common entry values.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the location of a field is coded as an integer value within a programming definition of the field.

7. The method of claim 3 wherein the datatype associated with a field within the online user input form is constrained based on the historical average value of the datatype for the field to form a constrained datatype field.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising transmitting an error message to a user if the user attempts to input a different datatype into the constrained datatype field.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising defining one or more business rules dictating when and how often the historical data is obtained and the conditions in which the one or more fields are modified.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising validating the calculated historical most common entry values against the historical data prior to modifying the one or more fields of the user input form.

11. A method of providing an optimized user input form including a plurality of input fields through web-based for display to a user, the method comprising:

determining whether the input field is an alphanumeric character input field or a binary checkbox to define an input field type;

determining whether the input field is filled with exclusively numeric, alphabetic, or binary symbol data to define a preferred datatype associated with the input field;

determining whether the input field is virtually always filled in by a user to define a relative importance of the input field;

determining a size of the field based on an average number of characters of the field as dictated by a historic average size to define a preferred input field size;

adaptively modifying the size of the input field as displayed on the web page based on the preferred input field size;

adaptively modifying a location of the input field on the form based on the relative importance of the input field; and

constraining a datatype of the input field based on the preferred datatype.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising creating an adaptively modified form for display to a present user based on the adaptively modified size of the input field, the adaptively modified location of the input field, and the constrained datatype of the input field.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising obtaining historic data including past user input data provided to a form identical or similar to the user input form.

14. The method of claim 13 further comprising storing the historic data in a database.

15. The method of claim 14 further comprising adding input from the present user input to the adaptively modified form to the historic data in the database.

16. The method of claim 11 wherein the size of the input field is modified by adding allocated space to the field if the historic average size indicates that a current size of the field is too short, and deleting at least some allocated space from a field if the historic average size indicates that the current size of the field is too long.

17. The method of claim 11 wherein the location of the input field is modified by moving the field higher or lower relative to other input fields in a displayed form based on the relative importance value.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the location of a field is coded as an integer value within a programming definition of the field.

19. An apparatus for adapting an online user input form providing user input to a web-based application, the apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

one or more stored sequences of instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to carry out the steps of;

defining one or more attributes related to one or more fields of the online user input form;

obtaining historical data comprising past user input to related user input forms;

calculating historical most common entry values for each attribute of the one or more attributes; and

modifying the one or more fields of the online user input form in accordance with the calculated historical average values.

20. The processor of claim 19 wherein the one or more attributes comprise at least one of a size of each field of the one or more fields, a location within the online user input form of each field of the one or more fields, and a datatype associated with each field of the one or more fields, and wherein the datatypes are selected from the group consisting of pure alpha text, pure numeric text, mixed alphanumeric text, and binary input data.

21. The processor of claim 20 wherein the size of each field is modified by adding allocated space to a field if the historic data indicates that a current size of the field is too short, and deleting at least some allocated space from a field if the historic data indicates that the current size of the field is too long.

22. The processor of claim 20 wherein the location of a field within the online user input form is modified by moving the field higher or lower within the online user input form relative to the other fields within the online user input based on a relative importance value calculated from the historical most common entry values.

23. The processor of claim 20 wherein the datatype associated with a field within the online user input form is constrained based on the historical most common entry value of the datatype for the field to form a constrained datatype field.

24. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions for adapting an online user input form providing user input to a web-based application, which instructions, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to carry out the steps of:

defining one or more attributes related to one or more fields of the online user input form;

obtaining historical data comprising past user input to related user input forms;

calculating historical most common entry values for each attribute of the one or more attributes; and

modifying the one or more fields of the online user input form in accordance with the calculated historical average values.

25. The machine-readable medium of claim 24 wherein the one or more attributes comprise at least one of a size of each field of the one or more fields, a location within the online user input form of each field of the one or more fields, and a datatype associated with each field of the one or more fields, and wherein the datatypes are selected from the group consisting of pure alpha text, pure numeric text, mixed alphanumeric text, and binary input data.

26. The machine-readable medium of claim 25 wherein the size of each field is modified by adding allocated space to a field if the historic data indicates that a current size of the field is too short, and deleting at least some allocated space from a field if the historic data indicates that the current size of the field is too long.

27. The machine-readable medium of claim 25 wherein the location of a field within the online user input form is modified by moving the field higher or lower within the online user input form relative to the other fields within the online user input based on a relative importance value calculated from the historical average values.

28. The machine-readable medium of claim 25 wherein the datatype associated with a field within the online user input form is constrained based on the historical most common entry value of the datatype for the field to form a constrained datatype field.