Expression and flexibility framework for providing notification(s)

• US 7,209,916 B1
• Filed: 02/27/2003
• Issued: 04/24/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Knight, Holly, Pather, Shyamalan, Seshadri, Praveen, Garrett, Philip, Blanch, Robert F.
• Primary Examiner(s): Wong; Don
• Assistant Examiner(s): Le; Michael
• Application Number:
  US10/375,250
• Time in Patent Office: 1,517 Days
• Field of Search: 707/3, 707/318, 719/318, 709/207
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1859 adapted to provide push services, e.g. data channels
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/224 providing notification on incoming messages, e.g. pushed notifications of received messages
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to facilitate timely delivery of notifications and performance of automated actions for users in the framework of an ad-hoc rules processing environment. An information agent operates as a distributed application to perform automated actions for users in accordance with user preferences and context. Various rules can be executed to delay, inhibit, and/or enable an action such as sending notifications according to the preferences and current user states as determined from the context. The rules can include data centric matching logic, set-oriented execution rules, rule ordering/interaction hierarchies, and ad-hoc Boolean combinations, for example.

Claims

1. A notification system comprising a computer processor for executing the following software components, the system is recorded on a computer-readable medium and capable of execution by a computer, comprising:

an agent component that processes received events and subscription information, the agent employing the events and subscriptions as data prior to processing so as to facilitate event and subscription processing;

a rules processor component associated with the agent component to perform automated actions in accordance with the processed events, subscription information and one or more rules, the one or more rules capture a user'"'"'s preference for performing the automated actions, the rules processor component comprises one or more rule templates that are configured via one or more rule parameters to perform the automated actions, the rule parameters include a subscriber id, a match action, and a match parameter, and wherein the one or more rules are modeled as parameterized queries that join the data, the rules processor performs an SQL join operation that matches conditions indicated by the data in accordance with preferences defined by the one or more rules; and

a context analyzer component that analyzes information regarding variables and parameters of a user that influence notification decision-making, the parameters comprise contextual information and additional parameters conditioned on the contextual information, the contextual information is discerned based on contextual information sources, the contextual information sources comprise at least one of sensors and statistical models, and the additional parameters comprise at least one of functions of observations made autonomously via one or more sensors and dynamically inferred via automated inference, the context analyzer component determining when and if the notifications should be delivered.

2. The system of claim 1, the agent component employs at least one of user state information, application state information, and user context information to facilitate performance of the automated actions.

3. The system of claim 1, the one or more rules are executed according to at least one of consecutive processing and concurrent processing.

4. The system of claim 1, the rules processor component employs external data to route notifications or perform automated actions, the external data associated with an attribute related to a user of a notification.

5. The system of claim 4, the attribute is maintained in a separate table from the notification.

6. The system of claim 1, the one or more rules executed in accordance with at least one of a select operation, a match operation, a queue action, a from operation, and a where operation.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising an Application Definition File (ADF) to facilitate configuration of the agent component.

8. The system of claim 1, the agent component is distributed across one or more applications and accesses one or more databases to perform automated actions.

9. The system of claim 1, the automated actions are performed between nodes in a communications chain.

10. The system of claim 1, the agent component is associated with at least one of an e-mail application, a voice application, an image application, a video application, a calendar application, a messenger application, a business application, a mobile application, an alerting application, a database application, an action component, and a desktop application.

11. The system of claim 1, the agent component maintains state information between at least two messages.

12. The system of claim 1, the agent component is associated with a filtering application to mitigate receiving unwanted messages.

13. The system of claim 12, the filtering application is a SPAM filter.

14. The system of claim 1, further comprising a context component that updates at least one of a local and a remote database with information relating to at least one user'"'"'s current state.

15. The system of claim 14, the context component includes at least one of a context source, a context characterization, a context consumer, information to obtain context, context propagation information, and information to expose context.

16. The system of claim 1, further comprising a priorities component to determine a notification ordering for one or more received notifications, the priorities component assigns an urgency value to the notifications.

17. The system of claim 1, the rules processor component processes ad-hoc combinations of Boolean expressions.

18. A notification system comprising a computer processor for executing the following software components, the system is recorded on a computer-readable medium and capable of execution by a computer, comprising:

means for obtaining events and subscription information;

means for processing the events and subscriptions information according to one or more rules;

means for generating data from the events and subscriptions data;

means for performing automated actions for subscribers in accordance with a joining of the one or more rules, the one or more rules associated with at least one rules template having at least one rules parameter, wherein the one or more rules are modeled as parameterized queries that join the data;

means for performing an SOL join operation that matches conditions indicated by the data in accordance with preferences defined by the one or more rules; and

means for analyzing information regarding variables and parameters of a user that influence notification decision-making, the parameters comprise contextual information and additional parameters conditioned on the contextual information, the contextual information is discerned based on contextual information sources, the contextual information sources comprise at least one of sensors and statistical models, and the additional parameters comprise at least one of functions of observations made autonomously via one or more sensors and dynamically inferred via automated inference.

19. The system of claim 18, the data comprising a plurality of data fields.

20. The system of claim 19, the data fields being stored in a notification table that is propagated with notification specific information.

21. The system of claim 18, further comprising computer implemented means for configuring the rules template and the rules parameter.

22. A computer implemented notification methodology, comprising the following computer executable acts:

modeling subscription and event information as data;

storing the subscription and event data in respective tables, the tables being propagated with the subscription and event information;

upon an event occurring, processing the subscription and event data to perform automated actions in accordance with a database join operation of one or more rules, wherein the one or more rules are modeled as parameterized queries that join the data, and wherein the database join operation matches conditions indicated by the data in accordance with preferences defined by the one or more rules;

employing at least one of a rules template and a rules parameter to process the one or more rules; and

analyzing information regarding variables and parameters of a user that influence notification decision-making, the parameters comprise contextual information and additional parameters conditioned on the contextual information, the contextual information is discerned based on contextual information sources, the contextual information sources comprise at least one of sensors and statistical models, and the additional parameters comprise at least one of functions of observations made autonomously via one or more sensors and dynamically inferred via automated inference.

23. The method of claim 22, further comprising modeling context information and application state information as data, and employing at least one of the context information and the application state information in the database join operation.

24. The method of claim 22, further comprising processing a plurality of events in a concurrent manner.

25. The method of claim 22, the rules processed according to at least one of an external data source, a state that is maintained between at least two messages, a set-oriented process, and a real time communications process to facilitate routing of the notifications.

26. The method of claim 22, further comprising applying the rules in a filtering process to mitigate reception of unwanted notifications.

27. The method of claim 22, further comprising analyzing at least one of a context source, a context consumer, a context character, a context obtaining function, a context propagation function, and a context exposing function when processing the rules.