ACTION BROKER

• US 20140172412A1
• Filed: 12/13/2012
• Published: 06/19/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Viegas, Evelyne, Pantel, Patrick, Mulwad, Varish
• Granted Patent: US 9,558,275 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/547 Remote procedure calls [RPC]; Web services

Abstract

Among other things, one or more techniques and/or systems are provided for building an action catalogue, generating an action frame for an action within the action catalogue, and/or executing an action. In an example, an action may be included within the action catalogue based upon descriptive text associated with an application indicating that the application is capable of performing the action (e.g., a movie app may be capable of performing an order movie tickets action). A parameter (e.g., a movie name) and/or an execution endpoint (e.g., a uniform resource identifier used to access movie ticket ordering functionality) may be used to generate an action frame for the action. In this way, user intent to perform an action may be identified from user input (e.g., a spoken command), and the action may be performed (e.g., on behalf of the user with minimal additional user input) by using the action frame.

Claims

1. A method for generating an action catalogue, comprising:

parsing descriptive text associated with an application to identify a candidate action provided by the application;

generating a feature vector for the candidate action based upon one or more content sources referencing the candidate action;

utilizing a classifier to determine, based upon the feature vector, whether the candidate action is valid or invalid; and

responsive to determining the candidate action is valid, including the candidate action as an action in an action catalogue.

2. The method of claim 1, the descriptive text comprising at least one of:

an application marketplace user review for the application;

a web-based user review for the application;

a blog or news article about the application;

or

an application description of the application.

3. The method of claim 1, the parsing descriptive text comprising:

utilizing a tokenization technique to generate one or more tokens from the descriptive text;

utilizing a natural language processing (NLP) technique to identify at least one of one or more part of speech (POS) tags, one or more phrase chunks, or one or more syntactic structures from at least some of the one or more tokens; and

constructing the candidate action based upon at least one of a part of speech tag, a phrase chunk, or a syntactic structure.

4. The method of claim 1, comprising:

generating an action frame for the action, the generating comprising;

identifying a provider capable of executing the action;

extracting a parameter from an action form provided by one or more providers, the parameter corresponding to information used to execute the action; and

populating the action frame with the parameter.

5. The method of claim 4, the provider comprising a website and the action form comprising a web form.

6. The method of claim 4, comprising:

mapping an application programming interface (API) associated with the provider to the action frame;

generating an execution endpoint uniform resource identifier (URI) associated with the API; and

populating the action frame with the execution endpoint URI.

7. The method of claim 6, comprising:

populating the action frame with a second execution endpoint URI associated with a second provider.

8. The method of claim 1, comprising:

analyzing user input to identify a user intent to perform the action;

identifying an action frame for the action based upon the user intent, the action frame specifying a parameter corresponding to information used to execute the action and an execution endpoint uniform resource identifier (URI) associated with an application programming interface (API) of a provider capable of executing the action;

obtaining a value for the parameter based upon at least one of the user input, a default value, or a user response to a solicitation for the value; and

invoking the provider, using the execution endpoint URI, to execute the action based upon the value of the parameter.

9. The method of claim 8, the user input corresponding to at least one of speech input, textual input, an implicit query, or a search query, the user input received through at least one of a personal computing device, a tablet device, a mobile device, or a car computing device.

10. The method of claim 8, comprising:

providing a result of the executed action.

11. The method of claim 10, the result comprising at least one of digital content, a purchase receipt, or a reservation receipt.

12. The method of claim 8, the action frame specifying a second provider capable of executing the action, and the method comprising:

selecting the provider, and not the second provider, to execute the action based upon the provider having a ranking above an execution rank threshold.

13. The method of claim 8, the invoking the provider comprising:

invoking the provider to execute the action to generate a result of the executed action without additional user input.

14. A method for executing an action, comprising:

analyzing user input to identify a user intent to perform an action;

identifying an action frame for the action based upon the user intent, the action frame specifying a parameter corresponding to information used to execute the action and an execution endpoint uniform resource identifier (URI) associated with an application programming interface (API) of a provider capable of executing the action;

obtaining a value for the parameter based upon at least one of the user input, a default value, or a user response to a solicitation for the value; and

invoking the provider, using the execution endpoint URI, to execute the action based upon the value of the parameter.

15. The method of claim 14, the provider comprising at least one of a marketplace application or a website.

16. The method of claim 14, comprising:

providing a result of the executed action, the result comprising at least one of digital content, a purchase receipt, or a reservation receipt.

17. A system for generating an action frame, comprising:

an action frame component configured to;

generate an action frame for an action, the generating comprising;

identify a provider capable of executing the action;

extract a parameter from an action form provided by the provider, the parameter corresponding to information used to execute the action; and

populate the action frame with the parameter and an execution endpoint uniform resource identifier (URI) associated with the provider.

18. The system of claim 17, comprising:

a catalogue component configured to;

parse descriptive text associated with an application to identify a candidate action provided by the application;

generate a feature vector for the candidate action based upon one or more content sources referencing the candidate action;

utilize a classifier to determine, based upon the feature vector, whether the candidate action is valid or invalid; and

responsive to determining the candidate action is valid, include the candidate action as the action in an action catalogue used to generate the action frame.

19. The system of claim 18, comprising:

an action broker component;

analyze user input to identify a user intent to perform the action;

identify the action frame for the action based upon the user intent;

obtain a value for the parameter based upon at least one of the user input, a default value, or a user response to a solicitation for the value; and

invoke the provider, using the execution endpoint URI, to execute the action based upon the value of the parameter.

20. The system of claim 19, the action broker component configured to:

provide a result of the executed action.