Intelligent Attention Management for Unified Messaging

• US 20130325923A1
• Filed: 05/31/2012
• Published: 12/05/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Jin, Hongxia
• Granted Patent: US 10,692,045 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/226 Delivery according to priorities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/56 Unified messaging, e.g. interactions between e-mail, instant messaging or converged IP messaging [CPM]

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention relate to a method, system, and computer program product to group and prioritize communications. Attention reports are automatically generated with representative communications displayed to a user for processing. As new communications are received, they are adaptively incorporated into the groupings and prioritization, together with previously received and processed communications.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

grouping electronic communications into clusters to form clustered data;

deriving at least one activity area from the clustered data, each activity area being a defined community of interconnected participants;

classifying each received communication into one of the activity areas to create a grouping of communications within each activity area; and

generating an attention report illustrating the created grouping of communications, including showing a representative communication for each activity area in the attention report.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein each activity area includes an assigned importance level, a topic list, and an activity area contributor list, each contributor including an associated contributor importance level.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising ranking communications in each activity area, including calculating a benefit score for each communication, and employing the calculated benefit score as a factor in the ranking.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the benefit score includes a factor selected from the group consisting of:

importance level of a sender in the activity area, similarity between the communication and the activity area, the recency of the communication and other communications, and combinations thereof.

5. The method of claim 3, further comprising determining a quantity of representative communications for each activity area.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein space allowed for the quantity of representative communications in the attention report is proportional to an importance measurement level associated with the activity area.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein classifying each received communication into one of the activity areas includes calculating a similarity between each received communication and the derived activity areas.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising comparing the calculated similarity to an activity area threshold, and adding the communication to an activity area when the similarity exceeds its threshold, and placing the communication in a general pool when the similarity does not meet any threshold.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising performing hierarchical clustering on all communications in the general pool and generating a new activity area based on similarity measurements among the communications in the general pool.

10. A computer program product for use with electronic communication data, the computer program product comprising:

a computer readable non-transitory storage medium having computer readable program code embodied thereon, the program code which when executed causes a computer to;

group electronic communications into clusters to form clustered data;

derive at least one activity area from the clustered data, each activity area being a defined community of interconnected participants;

classify each communication into one of the activity areas to create a group of communications within each activity area; and

generate an attention report to illustrate the created group of communications, including a representative communication for each activity area in the attention report.

11. The computer program product of claim 10, further comprising computer readable program code to assign an importance level to each activity area and rank communications within each activity area, including calculating a benefit score for each communication, and code to employ the calculated benefit score as a factor in the communication ranking.

12. The computer program product of claim 11, further comprising computer readable program code to calculate the benefit score based on a factor selected from the group consisting of:

importance level of a sender in this activity area, similarity between the communication and the activity area, the recency of the communication and other communications already seen by the user, and combinations thereof.

13. The computer program product of claim 11, further comprising computer readable program code to determine a quantity of representative communications for each activity area, wherein space allowed for the quantity of representative communications in the attention report is proportional to an importance measurement level associated with the activity area.

14. The computer program product of claim 10, further comprising computer readable program code to classify each received communication into an activity area by calculating a similarity between each received communication and the derived activity areas.

15. The computer program product of claim 14, further comprising computer readable program code to compare the calculated similarity to an activity area threshold, add the communication to an activity area when the similarity exceeds its threshold, and place the communication in a general pool when the similarity does not meet any threshold.

16. The computer program product of claim 15, further comprising computer readable program code to perform hierarchical clustering on all communications in the general pool and to generate a new activity area based on similarity measurements among the communications in the general pool.

17. A system comprising:

a shared pool of configurable resources, the shared pool including a physical host in communication with a plurality of physical machines, the physical host having a processing unit in communication with memory and data storage;

a functional unit local to a memory module and in communication with the processing unit, the functional unit having tools comprising;

a cluster manager to group the electronic communications into clusters to form clustered data, derive at least one activity area from the clustered data, and to classify each received communication into one of the activity areas, each activity area being a defined community of interconnected participants;

a report manager in communication with the cluster manager, the report manager to generate an attention report based on any received communications, the report to illustrate the activity areas to which each communication is grouped, including a representative communication for each activity area.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising the cluster manager to assign each activity area an importance level, a topic list, and an activity area contributor list, each contributor including an associated contributor importance level.

19. The system of claim 17, further comprising a calculation manager in communication with the cluster manager, the calculation manager to compute a benefit score for each communication, the cluster manager benefit score being a factor in ranking of the communications.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the benefit score is based on a factor selected from the group consisting of:

the importance level of a sender in the activity area, similarity between the communication and the activity area, the recency of the communication and other communications already seen by the user, and combinations thereof.

21. The system of claim 19, further comprising the report manager to determine a quantity of representative communications for each activity area.

22. The system of claim 21, further comprising the report manager to determine space allowed for the quantity of representative communications based on an importance measurement level associated with the activity area.

23. The system of claim 17, further comprising the cluster manager to calculate a similarity between each communication and the derived activity areas when classifying each communication into one of the activity areas.

24. The system of claim 23, further comprising the cluster manager to compute a threshold based on the calculated similarity of grouped communications within an activity area, and adding the communication to an activity area when similarity exceeds its threshold, and placing the communication in a general pool when the similarity does not meet any threshold.

25. The system of claim 24, further comprising the cluster manager to hierarchically cluster all communications in the general pool and generate a new activity area based on similarity measurements among the communications in the general pool.