Method and apparatus for calendaring reminders

• US 7,334,000 B2
• Filed: 08/22/2001
• Issued: 02/19/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/16/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AOL LLC (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Vengadasubbu, Meera, Zaeske, Andrew, Lao, Louis, Treitel, Richard J., Chhatrapati, Rupesh, Chester, Jon, Sobotka, David
• Primary Examiner(s): Wassum; Luke S
• Application Number:
  US10/484,176
• Publication Number:
  US 20040243547A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,372 Days
• Field of Search: 707/104.1, 705/9, 709/206, 710/6
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24547 Optimisations to support specific applications; Extensibility of optimisers
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1093 Calendar-based scheduling for persons or groups
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1095 Meeting or appointment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/80 Management or planning
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/951 Calendar or scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

An electronic calendar includes such features as recurring reminders, dividing unpredictable work loads into equal pieces, template free parsing, a reminders scheduling algorithm to reduce spikes, dynamic delivery and recovery algorithms, methods for splitting the work load between controllers and workers and for monitoring progress, all within the context of a calendar architecture for a large enterprise.

Claims

1. A reminders scheduling method for reducing spikes in delivery volume, comprising the steps of:

spreading a load of reminder deliveries across time without delivering said reminders too late or too early to satisfy a user'"'"'s intent by weighing one or more factors in deciding when to schedule a reminder for delivery, where said factors comprise any of said user'"'"'s intent and a destination device;

inferring said intent of said user by examining a lead time of said reminder, where lead time is a difference between a time an event occurs and a time for which a reminder for said event occurs; and

delivering said reminders according to one or more priorities determined from any of said user intent and said destination device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the shorter a lead time for a reminder, the more accuracy is required for its delivery.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising the step of:

assigning each reminder to a priority class based on the lead time of said reminder;

wherein each priority class has a delivery window during which reminders of that class are delivered; and

wherein size of a window varies according to urgency of a priority class, measured backwards from an ideal delivery time.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

clustering reminders into different priority classes based upon any of lead time and destination device.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

providing a dynamic priority queue; and

using a dynamic prioritization scheme to determine which reminders to deliver;

wherein reminders with similar delivery properties are grouped into units of work referred to as jobs.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein jobs in said dynamic priority queue are prioritized by their delivery urgency as follows:

jobs that are not yet late are always preferred over jobs that are late;

for jobs that are not late, the closer to late they are, the more urgent they are;

for jobs that are already late, the less late a job is, the more urgent the job is; and

in the event of a tie, prefer a job with the smallest delivery window.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising the step of:

delivering jobs which have less accurate delivery requirements earlier.