System and method for providing an intelligent multi-step dialog with a user

• US 7,337,158 B2
• Filed: 07/13/2004
• Issued: 02/26/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/06/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Avolin LLC
• Original Assignee: Consona CRM Incorporated (Aptean Superior Holdings, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kay, David B., Angel, Mark, Rudy, Jeffrey, Fratkina, Raya, Anderson, Monica, Copperman, Max, Stern, Robert, Huffman, Scott B.
• Primary Examiner(s): Holmes; Michael B.
• Application Number:
  US10/889,888
• Publication Number:
  US 20050055321A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,323 Days
• Field of Search: 704/9, 706 45- 46
• US Class Current: 706/45
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3329 Natural language query formulation or dialogue systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/042 Backward inferencing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A method and system are disclosed for retrieving information through the use of a multi-stage interaction with a client to identify particular knowledge content associated with a knowledge map.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

determining at least one member of a concept set satisfies a predicate of a trigger;

limiting relevant areas of a knowledge map using the predicate of the trigger;

restricting or preferring relevant documents to those documents that are tagged to the relevant areas of the knowledge map; and

providing stored information to a user or a process using at least an indication of the restricted or preferred relevant documents that are tagged to the relevant areas of the knowledge map.

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

if the predicate of the trigger comprises an AT predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map comprises limiting to a specified concept node of the AT predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises an UNDER predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to a specified node and descendants of the specified node of the UNDER predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a PATH predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to a specified node, ancestors of the specified node, and descendants of the specified node of the PATH predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises an ABOVE predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to nodes above a specified node of the ABOVE predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a CONTAINS-ONE-OF predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to nodes that contain at least one of the nodes in a list of nodes of the CONTAINS-ONE-OF predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a CONTAINS-ALL-OF predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to nodes in a list of nodes of the CONTAINS-ALL-OF predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a PREFERENCE predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to at least one node in a list of nodes of the PREFERENCE predicate, and the restricting or preferring consists of preferring;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a LEAF predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to leaf nodes of the LEAF predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a ROOT predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to root nodes of the ROOT predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a PARENT predicate and a specified node of the PARENT predicate includes child nodes, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to the specified node of the PARENT predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a HAS-DOCUMENTS predicate and any documents are tagged to a specified node of the HAS-DOCUMENTS predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to the specified node of the HAS-DOCUMENTS predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a NOT-AT predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes excluding a specified node of the NOT-AT predicate from the relevant areas of a knowledge map;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a NOT-UNDER predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes excluding a specified node and descendants of the specified node of the NOT-UNDER predicate from the relevant areas of a knowledge map;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises an UNDER-IF-TAGGED predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to a specified node and descendants of the specified node of the UNDER-IF-TAGGED predicate, and the restricting or preferring includes restricting relevant documents to those documents that are tagged to the limited relevant areas and to documents that are not tagged to a taxonomy of the specified node of the UNDER-IF-TAGGED predicate;

if the predicate of the trigger comprises a PATH-IF-TAGGED predicate, then the limiting relevant areas of the knowledge map includes limiting to a specified node, ancestors of the specified node, and descendants of the specified node of the PATH-IF-TAGGED predicate, and the restricting or preferring includes restricting relevant documents to those documents that are tagged to the limited relevant areas and to documents that are not tagged to a taxonomy of the specified node of the PATH-IF-TAGGED predicate.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising evaluating a compound predicate of a trigger, the compound predicate comprising at least one Boolean operator and at least two predicates selected from the group consisting of AT, UNDER, PATH, ABOVE, CONTAINS-ONE-OF, CONTAINS-ALL-OF, PREFERENCE, LEAF, ROOT, PARENT, HAS-DOCUMENTS, NOT-AT, NOT-UNDER, UNDER-IF-TAGGED, and PATH-IF-TAGGED.