Methods for and applications of learning and inferring the periods of time until people are available or unavailable for different forms of communication, collaboration, and information access
First Claim
1. A communications system, comprising:
- a logging component that stores user presence information over time that relates to one or more states of the user, the user presence information comprises information that relates to a period of time until the user reviews at least one of a message or an item of information;
a prediction component associated with the logging component constructed to predict an amount of time until the user reviews the at least one of the message or the item of information based upon at least one of recent or current evidence, or a combination thereof, associated with review of messages or items of information by the user; and
a component that automatically generates one or more status messages as a function of the user presence information, and communicates the one or more status messages to an entity, the one of more status messages comprises information associated with a specified period of time until the user reviews the at least one of the message or the item of information.
2 Assignments
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Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method are provided to learn and infer the time until a user will be available for communications, collaboration, or information access, given evidence about such observations as time of day, calendar, location, presence, and activity. The methods can be harnessed to coordinate communications between parties via particular modalities of interaction. The system includes a user state identifier that determines a user'"'"'s state from background knowledge, the flow of time, or one or more context information sources. A data log can be employed to store information about user state changes and observational evidence to accumulate statistics and build inferential models of the availability and unavailability of users for different kinds of communication, collaboration, and information access. A forecaster is constructed from the accumulated statistics and/or learned models to enable a determination of a user'"'"'s likely return, or, more generally, the probability distribution over a user'"'"'s likely return to particular states of availability. The forecaster can be employed to cache information for offline access, drive displays of availability and unavailability, to send messages that include availability forecasts, and to automatically perform scheduling or rescheduling of communications.
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Citations
18 Claims
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1. A communications system, comprising:
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a logging component that stores user presence information over time that relates to one or more states of the user, the user presence information comprises information that relates to a period of time until the user reviews at least one of a message or an item of information; a prediction component associated with the logging component constructed to predict an amount of time until the user reviews the at least one of the message or the item of information based upon at least one of recent or current evidence, or a combination thereof, associated with review of messages or items of information by the user; and a component that automatically generates one or more status messages as a function of the user presence information, and communicates the one or more status messages to an entity, the one of more status messages comprises information associated with a specified period of time until the user reviews the at least one of the message or the item of information. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
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6. A method to coordinate communications systems, comprising:
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determining one or more user states associated with user availability; detecting a change of the one or more user states; storing user context information associated with the one or more user states at about the time of detecting the change of the one or more user states, the user context information includes information associated with a period of time until the user reviews at least one of a message or an item of information; and automatically generating one or more status messages associated with the user context information, and communicating the one or more status messages to an entity, the one of more status messages comprising information that identifies a period of time until the user reviews the at least one of the message or the item of information. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. A system for learning and inferring a user'"'"'s availability, comprising:
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a presence detector that determines a user'"'"'s presence and generates presence data indicating whether the user is present and whether there is a probability of the user'"'"'s presence, the presence data comprises information that relates to a period of time until the user reviews at least one of a message or an item of information; and a data log that stores the presence data generated by the presence detector to accumulate statistics relating to at least availability and unavailability of the user and review of messages or items of information; and a component that automatically generates one or more status messages associated with the presence data, and communicates the one or more status messages to an entity, the one of more status messages comprises information that identifies a period of time until the user reviews the at least one of the message or the item of information. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18)
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Specification