Automatically finding contextually related items of a task

• US 8,341,175 B2
• Filed: 09/16/2009
• Issued: 12/25/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/16/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Perantatos, George, Wana, John S., Kamawat, Kuldeep
• Primary Examiner(s): Fleurantin, Jean B
• Application Number:
  US12/560,435
• Publication Number:
  US 20110066619A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,196 Days
• Field of Search: 707/713, 707/765, 707/766, 707/769, 707/770
• US Class Current: 707/766
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24 Querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

Architecture for enabling a user to automatically recover documents and other information associated with work contexts and recover documents and other information artifacts associated with a specific project. The architecture enables monitoring and recording of activity information related to user interactions with information artifacts pertaining to a particular work context. The user can select a document having a portion of work content (e.g., a term or other type of reference item in a document) related to the work context. A lexical analysis is performed on the activity information and the reference item to identify lexical similarities. A list of candidate items (e.g., related documents) is inferred from the information artifacts based on the lexical similarities. The candidate items related to the work context are presented to the user, who can select specific items to reestablish the work context.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented contextual system, comprising:

an activity component that monitors and records activity information related to user interaction with items associated with performing tasks in a work context;

an analysis component that performs lexical analysis on a reference item and the items associated with the activity information to identify lexical similarities and thereby infer relationships between items worked on by the user;

an inference component that infers candidate items based on the activity information and the lexical similarities resulting from the lexical analysis when reconstituting the work contexts;

a presentation component for presenting the candidate items related to the work context; and

a processor that executes computer-executable instructions associated with at least one of the activity component, the analysis component, the inference component, or the presentation component.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the activity component further comprises a background component that monitors user activity as a background function without user interaction.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the results of the lexical analysis comprise common terms found in the reference item and the candidate items.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the user interaction further comprises at least one of a switching operation between the programs or data, a copy paste operation between the programs or data, an insertion operation of the programs or data into an attachment, a toggle frequency measurement, a timestamp operation, a bookmarking operation, a link operation, a save operation of an item as a copy in another location, or a dwell time.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a query component for explicitly querying for candidate items related to the reference item.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising a collection component for collecting a set of candidate items and implicitly querying the set for candidate items related to the reference item.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a storage component for storing the activity information at least one of locally or remotely.