Metadata schema for interpersonal communications management systems

• US 7,870,240 B1
• Filed: 06/28/2002
• Issued: 01/11/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Horvitz, Eric J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Eng; David Y
• Application Number:
  US10/187,078
• Time in Patent Office: 3,119 Days
• Field of Search: 707/102, 709/223, 709/227
• US Class Current: 709/223
• 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

Abstract

A system and method for generating, managing and accessing a schema that facilitates maximizing utility of a managed communication is provided. The system provides a computer-based system for creating, accessing and/or managing a schema employed in utility-optimizing communication management. The system includes computer components for receiving communication related data and storing such communication related data, inferences concerning such data, probabilities and/or probability distributions associated with such data in an extensible, portable, data schema. The schema can facilitate making utility optimizing communication management decisions.

Claims

1. A system for managing communications, the system comprising:

a processor;

a memory communicatively coupled to the processor, the memory having stored therein computer-executable instructions comprising one or more computer-executable components that, when executed by the processor, implement the system, the one or more computer-executable components comprising;

a data receiver that receives relevant data, the relevant data being relevant to a communication from a contactor to a contactee;

a schema generator that;

generates a schema comprising a plurality of elements and stores one or more portions of the relevant data in respective one or more elements of the plurality of elements of the schema, and

updates the schema in response to inputs from one or more analyzers;

an override analyzer that;

employs information in the schema to selectively generate override information indicating whether a selected communication channel should be overridden, the override information being generated based on at least one of an expected activity level for a selected communication channel, scheduled maintenance times for the selected communication channel, or security levels at various times on the selected communication channel, and

provides the override information to the schema generator to update the schema;

a time away analyzer that;

employs information in the schema to selectively generate time away data that indicates availability of the contactee for the communication, and,

when the selected communication channel is selected, updates the time away data in accordance with changes in the availability of the contactee related to the selection of the selected communication channel, and provides the updated time away data to the schema generator to update the schema; and

a communications manager that;

employs the received relevant data stored in the schema to select a communication channel to utilize for establishing the communication from a plurality of communication channels, and

causes the selected communication channel to be overridden by selecting an other communication channel, based on the override information.

2. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprising preference data for at least one of the contactee or the contactor.

3. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprising context data for at least one of the contactee or the contactor.

4. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprising location data for at least one of the contactee or the contactor.

5. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprising a specification of a time-based function for a cost of delaying the communication.

6. The system of claim 1, the override information is further based on a length of the communication causing the communication to occur at a time that overlaps with a scheduled maintenance time of the scheduled maintenance times for the selected communication channel.

7. The system of claim 1, the override analyzer provides the override information as an override input to the communications manager.

8. The system of claim 1, the schema generator stores the relevant data in an XML schema.

9. The system of claim 8, the relevant data is stored in a binary large object.

10. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprises at least one of:

identity of the contactor, relationship of the contactor to the contactee, dynamically determined memberships of the contactor in groups by activities, a preferred communication time, or a preferred communication day.

11. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprises at least one of:

preferred hardware device for the contactor or the contactee, preferred set of software components, or preferred communication modality or channel for the contactor or the contactee.

12. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprises at least one of:

an estimated amount of time required for the communication, other resources required at a time of the communication to optimize utility of the communication, an initial channel employed in the communication, or information about goals or intentions of the communication.

13. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprises at least one of:

an expected time that the communication will be worthless or cost of using each of the plurality of communication channels.

14. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprises at least one of:

cost of communicating at different times based on a context, information about interruptability of the contactor or the contactee over time, information about an upcoming appointment of the contactor or the contactee, a preferred communication policy of the contactor or the contactee, or a preferred interruptability of the contactor or the contactee.

15. The system of claim 1, the relevant data comprises at least one of an activity type, a location, a calendar, a communication history, an ambient noise, a time on task, a gaze track data, a communication need data, or an attentional status data.

16. The system of claim 1, the relevant data includes one or more communication policies that can be applied to the communication.

17. The system of claim 16, a communication policy of the one or more communication policies can be invoked based on a logical TRUE result produced by a logical OR of one or more context data values.

18. The system of claim 1, the communications manager employs Bayesian techniques to select the communication channel that optimizes utility of the communication.

19. The system of claim 1, the relevant data includes at least one of inferences concerning missing pieces of data, inferences concerning utility optimizing decisions, cost data associated with utility optimizing decisions, or benefit data associated with utility optimizing decisions.

20. The system of claim 1, the time away analyzer infers an optimal time for the communication based upon the time away data.

21. The system of claim 1, the time away data includes at least one or more of a current time away from a task, a current time away from a computer component, and a current time away from a contextual data item state.

22. The system of claim 1, the time away data includes at least one of a historical time away from a task data, a historical time away from a computer component data, a historical time away from a contextual data item state, or a likelihood that the contactee will return to a device or a task.

23. The system of claim 22, the likelihood that the contactee will return to the device or the task includes information associated with a likelihood that the contactee will return to a task.

24. The system of claim 20, the communication manager employs the inferred optimal time to select the communication channel.

25. The system of claim 1, further including a preference resolver that correlates preferences of the contactor with preferences of the contactee to produce a ranked list of communication channels to establish the communication.

26. The system of claim 25, the preference resolver weights the preferences of the contactee higher than the preferences of the contactor.

27. The system of claim 25, the preference resolver weights the preferences of the contactor higher than the preferences of the contactee.

28. A method for optimizing utility in a managed communication, the method comprising:

employing a processor executing computer executable instructions embodied on a computer readable storage medium to perform the following acts;

receiving relevant data, the relevant data being relating to at least one of a contactor or a contactee of a communication;

storing one or more portions of the relevant data in respective one or more elements of a plurality of elements of a schema;

employing a utility function to process the one or more portions of the received relevant data stored in the respective one or more elements to select an optimal communication channel from a plurality of communication channels for establishing the communication between the contactor and contactee;

analyzing information in the schema to selectively generate override data indicating whether the selected optimal communication channel should be overridden, the override data being based on at least one or more of an expected activity level for the selected optimal communication channel, scheduled maintenance times for the selected optimal communication channel, or security levels at various times on the selected optimal communication channel;

updating the schema with the override data; and

upon determining that the override data indicates that the selected communication channel should be overridden, overriding the selected optimal communication channel by selecting an other communication channel.

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising correlating preferences of the contactor and preferences of the contactee to select the optimal communication channel, the relevant data comprising preference data of the contactor and preference data of the contactee.

30. The method of claim 29, further comprising weighting the contactee preferences higher than the contactor preferences.

31. The method of claim 29, further comprising weighting the contactor preferences higher than the contactee preferences.

32. The method of claim 28, the determination to override the selected communication channel is based upon a length of the communication causing the communication to occur at a time that overlaps with a scheduled maintenance time of the scheduled maintenance times for the selected optimal communication channel.

33. The method of claim 28, further comprising inferring an optimal time for the communication based upon time away data.

34. The method of claim 33, the time away data includes at least one of a current time away from a task, a current time away from a computer component, a current time or away from a contextual data item state.

35. The method of claim 33, the time away data includes at least one of a historical time away from a task data, a historical time away from a computer component data, or a historical time away from a contextual data item state.

36. The method of claim 33, the time away data includes at least one of information associated with the likelihood that a person will return to a task, information associated with the likelihood that a person will return to a computer component, or information associated with the likelihood that a person will return to a contextual data item state.

37. A computer readable storage medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, perform a method of:

receiving relevant data associated with a communication between communicating parties;

storing the relevant data in at least one element from a plurality of elements of a schema by identifying at least one element in a first portion from the plurality of elements in which to store the relevant data and generating an instance of the at least one element using the relevant data, the schema comprising a second portion of the plurality of elements;

receiving information to store in the second portion of the plurality of elements, wherein the information comprises;

override information that is based on at least one of an expected activity level for a selected communication channel, scheduled maintenance times for the selected communication channel, or security levels at various times on the selected communication channel, and

reliability information that is based on at least one failure on the selected communication channel;

employing, by the processor, the received relevant data stored in the schema to select an optimal communication channel from a plurality of communication channels for establishing the communication between the communicating parties; and

overriding, by the processor, the selected optimal communication channel by selecting an other communication channel upon determining, based on the override information, that a length of the communication causes the establishment of the communication on the selected optimal communication channel to overlap with a scheduled maintenance time on the selected communication channel.

38. A system for optimizing a utility of a managed communication, the system comprising:

a processor;

a memory communicatively coupled to the processor, the memory having stored therein computer-executable instructions comprising one or more of computer-executable components that, when executed on the processor, implement the system the one or more of computer-executable components comprising;

means for retrieving, by a processor, relevant data, wherein the relevant data is being relevant to a communication between communicating parties;

means for storing the relevant data in at least one element from a plurality of elements of a schema by identifying at least one element in a first portion from the plurality of elements in which to store the relevant data and generating an instance of the at least one element using the relevant data, the schema comprising a second portion of the plurality of elements;

means for receiving time away data and override data to store in the second portion of the plurality of elements;

means for analyzing the relevant data stored in the schema to select an optimal communication channel to employ in establishing the communication between the communicating parties;

means for employing information in the schema to selectively generate the time away data, analyzing the time away data to infer an optimal time to establish the communication between the communicating parties that employs the selected optimal communication channel and for storing the optimal time in at least one first element of the second portion of the plurality of elements, wherein the time away data is based on a current time away from a task data, a current time away from a computer component data, a historical time away from a task data and a historical time away from a computer component data;

means for employing information in the schema to selectively generate the override data, analyzing the override data to determine whether establishing the communication on the selected optimal communication channel at the optimal time causes a length of the communication to overlap with a scheduled maintenance time of the selected optimal communication channel and for storing the override data in at least one first element of the second portion of the plurality of elements; and

means for overriding the selected optimal communication channel that overrides the selected optimal communication channel by selecting other communication channel when the means for analyzing the relevant data determines that the relevant data comprises the override data.