Integrated work management and tracking

• US 7,484,179 B2
• Filed: 06/30/2005
• Issued: 01/27/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Hennings, Eric J., Pinckney, Michael D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hutton; Doug
• Assistant Examiner(s): Dasgupta; Soumya
• Application Number:
  US11/172,272
• Publication Number:
  US 20070006085A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,307 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 715/764
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

The present application describes a work management/tracking framework that allows users to organize work around goals that may utilize several applications. Goals may encompass smaller individual tasks that span more than one application. An action object is used to represent a goal and can have one or more task items associated with it. The task items associated with an action object represent tasks that are included in the events and processes necessary to accomplish the goal. As a user works, the tasks that the user works on are tracked. If the user has requested to maintain the tasks in an action object, the tasks are associated with an action object. The user is assisted in pulling in possible task items that the user may wish to associate with an action object by being provided with a list of selectable task items that may be related to the action object.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

generating a primary action object

automatically tracking one or more user selected task items within an electronic workspace;

associating the tracked task items with the primary action object;

automatically locating one or more secondary action objects, and identifying one or more collateral task items within the one or more secondary action objects, wherein the indentified collateral task items are associated with both similar and disparate applications;

presenting the one or more identified collateral task items via a user interface;

selecting at least one of the presented collateral task items;

associating the selected collateral task items with the primary action object; and

storing the primary action object.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising receiving a request to associate the task items with the primary action object.

3. The method as recited in claim 2, wherein the request to associate the task items with the primary action object occurs after at least one task item has been tracked.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more task items further comprise task items selected from the following list of task items:

e-mail messages;

word processing documents;

contacts;

electronic spreadsheets;

electronic presentation slides;

processes;

application programs;

user interface state;

web sites;

action objects.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the identifying step further comprises identifying collateral task items from one or more secondary action objects that are similar to the primary action object.

6. The method as recited in claim 5, further comprising identifying an action object type associated with the primary action object and with the secondary action objects;

and wherein a secondary action object is similar to the primary action object if the secondary action object is the same type as the primary action object.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the identifying step further comprises identifying collateral work items from a secondary action object that are similar to the tracked task items.

8. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the tracked task items are represented in the primary action object as links.

9. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

identifying an action type associated with the primary action object;

associating the tracked task items and the selected collateral task items with the action type.

10. A work management system stored on one or more computer-readable storage media, having computer executable instructions that when executed cause a computer to generate:

a task tracker configured to automatically track one or more user selected task items processed during a work session;

an action object creation module configured to create a current action object and to associate at least one or the one or more task items with the current action object;

a collateral task item module configured to automatically identify collateral task items, associated with similar and disparate applications, from one or more stored action objects and to associate collateral task items with the current action object upon selection by a user; and

an action object store to store the current action object and the stored action objects.

11. The work management system as recited in claim 10, wherein the task items are tracked across multiple applications.

12. The work management system as recited in claim 10, wherein the task items are represented as links in the current action object.

13. The work management system as recited in claim 10, wherein the collateral task item module is further configured to identify collateral task items as being task items from stored action objects of a same type as the current action object.

14. The work management system as recited in claim 10, wherein the collateral task item module is further configured to identify collateral task items as being task items from stored action objects that are similar to task items from the current action object.

15. The work management system as recited in claim 10, wherein the collateral task item module is further configured to identify collateral task items as being task items from stored action objects that are related to similar task items from the current action object.