Composable presence and availability services

• US 7,493,369 B2
• Filed: 06/30/2004
• Issued: 02/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Horvitz, Eric J., Apacible, Johnson T., Koch, Paul B.
• Primary Examiner(s): Dalencourt; Yves
• Application Number:
  US10/881,429
• Publication Number:
  US 20040249776A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,693 Days
• Field of Search: 709/207, 706/10, 706/11, 706/4
• US Class Current: 709/207
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to facilitate collaboration and communications between entities such as between parties to a communication, automated applications and components, and/or combinations thereof. The systems and methods of the present invention include a service that supports collaboration and communication by learning predictive models that provide forecasts of one or more aspects of a user'"'"'s presence and availability. Presence forecasts include a user'"'"'s current location or future locations at different levels of location precision and of the availability to users of different devices or applications. Availability assessments include inferences about the cost of interrupting a user in different ways and a user'"'"'s current or future access to one or more communication channels that may be supported by one or more devices with appropriate capabilities. The predictive models are constructed via statistical learning methods from data collected by considering user activity and proximity from multiple devices, in addition to analysis of the content of users'"'"' calendars, the time of day, and day of week, for example. Beyond ambient data collection, users can provide input via batch input tools or via intermittent probes of their situation and context. Various applications are provided that employ the presence and availability information supplied by the models in order to facilitate collaboration and communications between entities.

Claims

1. A system comprising computer-executable components stored on a computer-readable medium that, when executed on one or more processors, facilitates determining a user'"'"'s presence and availability, comprising:

a monitor component that assesses a user'"'"'s pattern of availability by sampling the user'"'"'s context at random time intervals and recording data relating to the user'"'"'s present context and state of activity, the recorded data used to refine a predictive model that infers the user'"'"'s future pattern of availability;

a learning component that is trained according to the user'"'"'s pattern of availability to infer an expected time until the user will be available to receive a communication via a particular device, channel, or location; and

an interface component that interacts with the learning component to provide current and predictive presence information for the user with respect to the device, the channel or the location, the interface component configured to gather data and generate inferences about the availability of different communication channels, provide presence information with respect to different locations, or provide overall availability associated with a current cost of interruption, the gathered data including at least an elapsed time that a software application has been in use by a user.

2. The system of claim 1, the system of claim 1, the interface component includes configuration tools that allow a system to collect data from users in real time and to perform inference regarding a current and future availability of communication channels, a location of the user, a workload or cost of interruption of users.

3. The system of claim 1, the monitor component monitors ambient data and captures user tags on data.

4. The system of claim 3, the monitor component acquires information from users in one-shot assessment settings.

5. The system of claim 1, the interface component provides configuration option for devices having one or more communications channels including a time setting for communications availability.

6. The system of claim 1, the interface component includes options to configure user permissions and setting interruption costs.

7. The system of claim 1, the interface component includes configuration options to configure at least one location within at least one other location.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising a wireless component or a global positioning component for automatically determining a location.

9. The system of claim 1, the interface component includes options for configuring explicit channels of communication.

10. The system of claim 9, the channels of communications provide distinctions for learning and reasoning to occur for use in coordinating and routing communications and collaboration.

11. The system of claim 9, further comprising a data collection component relating to availabilities of the channels over time and a forecast component that is created on demand of users or agents that use availability forecasts.

12. The system of claim 11, the channels are input to systems in an organization by default, or a base list of standard channels are included that are extended by users or administrators.

13. The system of claim 1, the interface component enables users with privileges to view inferences in terms of high-level summaries as displayed, or via drill down into more specific views on probability distributions.

14. The system of claim 13, the probability distributions are associated with a user-adjustable setting to control the prediction accuracy of the displayed inferences.

15. The system of claim 13, the interface component provides at least one of a maximum likelihood time that channels will become available, an expected cost of interruption in terms of a range for a bar graph between the minimum and maximum cost specified by a user, a current computed expected value, a summary of where the user was last seen as active on a device being monitored by the system, or an age of a current inference.

16. The system of claim 13, further comprising a details selection in order that a user with privileges can view details of an inferred probability distribution.

17. The system of claim 16, the probability distribution includes a base probability distribution and a cumulative probability distribution.

18. The system of claim 13, further comprising an expected cost indication associated with a willingness to pay to avoid an interruption at a current time.

19. The system of claim 13, further comprising a probability distribution over high and low workloads being inferred about a user'"'"'s busy-ness state.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising probabilities used in conjunction with costs assessed on a respective state to compute an expected cost of interruption, as Σ

_ip(S_i|E₁ . . . E_n)Cost (S_i A_j), where p(S_i|E₁ . . . E_n) are the probabilities of each state of interruptability S_i, given observations E₁ . . . E_n and where Cost (S_i,A_j) represents the cost associated with being interrupted in the state by alert type A_j.

21. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable instructions stored thereon that, when executed on one or more processors, implements a schema to facilitate communications and collaboration between entities relating to a user'"'"'s presence and availability, comprising:

at least a first data field associated with a device parameter, a channel parameter, and a location parameter; and

a second data field that binds the parameters in order to facilitate determination of a user'"'"'s presence and inference of the user'"'"'s future times of availability to receive a specified type of communication based on user activity information obtained from sampling a user'"'"'s context at random time intervals, the user activity information includes at least an elapsed time that a previously used application had been used by the user, wherein the data fields are associated with at least one method for communications, the at least one method includes a method to allow for querying about time until use of a device or availability of a channel, a method to allow for querying about user presence;

current and expected time of availability, a method to query for a user'"'"'s cost of interruption (COI), or a method to query for a user'"'"'s current available channels.

22. The schema of claim 21, the first data field associated with models that include Graph data, Sensing data, Location data, data relating to which application appears on Top, Keyboard data, Remote connection, Meeting data, and communications interface data.

23. The schema of claim 21, further comprising user preference data.

24. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Users table having a UserId, an Alias, or a UserName field.

25. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Computers table having a ComputerId, or a ComputerName field.

26. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Locations table having a LocationId, a UserId, a ParentLocationId, or a LocationName field.

27. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Devices table having a DeviceId, a UserId, a ComputerId, a LocationId, or a DeviceName field.

28. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a DeviceAvailability table having a DeviceId, a StartTimeTicks, or an EndTimeTicks field.

29. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Bindings table having a BindingId or a BindingName field.

30. The schema of claim 29, the Bindings table associated with at least one of a user'"'"'s Presence, Email, Remote Presence, and Presence and Connected status.

31. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Channels table having a ChannelId, a UserId, a BindingId, or a ChannelName field.

32. The schema of claim 31, the Channels table associated with at least one of a user'"'"'s IM (Instant Message), Email, Full screen, Video, Audio, and Phone status.

33. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Device Channels table having a DeviceId, or a ChannelId.

34. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Wireless Access table having a UserId, a WirelessAccessPoint, or a LocationId field.

35. The schema of claim 21, further comprising an Activity Types table having an ActivityTypeId, or an ActivityTypeName.

36. The schema of claim 35, the Activity type table associated with at least one of a Top application, a Location, an application running, an Audio, a Remote status, a Present status, or a Connected status;

and further comprising a time that a currently used application has been used without pause greater than a predetermined number of seconds.

37. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Computer Activity Log table having a UserId, a ComputerID, an ActivityTypeId, an EndTimeTicks, a StartTimeTicks, or Property field.

38. The schema of claim 21, further comprising a Meetings table having a UserId, a StartTimeTicks, a MeetingId, an Attended Meeting, a Landmark, an Interruptability, an Actual Location, a Subject, a Location, an Organizer, a Required Attendees, an Optional Attendees, a Meeting Sender, a Meeting Resources, an EntryId, a Busy Status, a Label, an Importance, a Response Status, a Recurrence Pattern, a Minutes Duration, a Minutes Reminder, an IsResponseRequested, an IsOnlineMeeting, an IsPatternException a MyName, a MyOfficeLocation, a MyOwnedAliases, a MyAliases, a MyManagersManager, a MyManager, or a MyDirectReports field.