Method and apparatus for generating a new event directly from a document

• US 8,655,895 B2
• Filed: 05/29/2012
• Issued: 02/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Blackberry Limited
• Original Assignee: Blackberry Limited
• Inventors: Vanden Heuvel, David, May, Darrell Reginald, Hardy, Michael Thomas, Luu, Lap
• Primary Examiner(s): REYES, MARIELA D
• Application Number:
  US13/482,912
• Publication Number:
  US 20120272129A1
• Time in Patent Office: 630 Days
• Field of Search: 707/755, 707/758
• US Class Current: 707/755
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/123 Storage facilities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/295 Named entity recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1097 Task assignment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/046 Interoperability with other network applications or services

Abstract

An event providing apparatus includes a storage device in communicating with a date/time detector module. The detector module detects a condition that at least a portion of information stored on the storage device could be mapped to an event, identifies date and time entries in the information, and generates a hyperlink to open an application for creating an event for each entry, the date and time being provided to the application to generate the event directly from the information. The apparatus also includes a display for displaying the time and date in the form of the hyperlink; and a prompter module communicating with the detector module for automatically providing a prompt related to the event in response to selection of the hyperlink. In response to user interaction with the user prompt, the application is started and the event based on the hyperlinked date and time is created.

Claims

1. An event providing apparatus for use in a network communications system, said apparatus comprising:

a storage device for storing information;

a processor in communication with said storage device for receiving said information, the processor configured to;

detect a condition that at least a portion of said information could be mapped to an event;

identify date and time entries in said information; and

generate a hyperlink to open an application capable of creating an event for each of said identified date and time entries, the date and time being provided to the application wherein the event can be generated in the application directly from the information;

a display for displaying the time and date in the form of the hyperlink, the display further for automatically providing a user prompt related to said event in response to selection of the hyperlink;

wherein the application is invoked in response to a user interaction with said user prompt to receive details of a new event based on the hyperlink,

and wherein the processor is further configured to, when said information is an email message;

identify a thread in said email message;

detect that a defined threshold is reached or exceeded in the email message; and

when said defined threshold is reached or exceeded, prompt a user to create said new event.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a lookup table for identifying a first type of said date and time entries, wherein the processor is configured to identify said first type of said date and time entries, and wherein said first type of said date and time entries comprise a complete date and time format.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the processor is configured to identify a second type of said date and time entries, and wherein said second type of said date and time entries comprises an incomplete date and time format or a relative date and time expression.

4. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein said relative date and time expression comprises today, tomorrow, yesterday, morning, noon, afternoon, evening or night.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said defined threshold is a number of responses received in said thread or a length of time that said thread has been active.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured for communicating with said storage device to map at least said portion of said information to said new event in response to user interaction with said user prompt.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured with a lexical analyzer for communicating with a parser and a symbol table.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said event comprises:

a calendar event or a task event.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said network communications system comprises a server, and wherein said apparatus is resident in said server.

10. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said network communications system comprises a wireless device, and wherein said apparatus is resident in said wireless device.

11. The apparatus of claim 1, in which said information is in an email and a link is inserted in the event which can be used to access the complete email from which the event was created.

12. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said new event has a notes section, and said mapping comprises inserting a link to said information in the notes section of said event.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein said information is an email message, and wherein said link is a MIME reference ID associated with said email message.

14. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said event is provided in a wireless device.

15. A method of creating a new event in an apparatus for use in a network communications system, the method comprising:

storing a document in a storage device;

receiving said document from said storage device into a detector module, said detector module being a date/time detector;

analyzing said document, said analyzing identifying date and time entries; and

based on the identified content in said document generating a hyperlink for each of said identified date and time entries to open an application capable of creating an event, said identified content being provided to the application wherein the event can be generated in the application directly from the document;

displaying the time and date in the form of the hyperlink;

automatically providing a user prompt related to said event in response to selection of the hyperlink; and

in response to a user interaction with said user prompt starting the application in which an event based on the hyperlinked date and time is created,

wherein the detector module additionally includes a thread detector and the method includes determining when a defined threshold has been met or exceeded in respect of said thread, and when said defined threshold has been met or exceeded, prompting a user to create said new event.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein said analyzing comprises searching in a lookup table to identify a first type of date and time entries, and wherein said first type of date and time entries comprise a complete date and time format.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein said step of analyzing comprises processing said document in a lexical analyzer and a parser to identify a second type of date and time entries wherein said second type of date and time entries comprises an incomplete data and time format or a relative date and time expression.

18. The method of claim 17, comprising:

generating a hyperlink for each of said identified first type of date and time entries and each of said identified second type of date time entries;

upon selection of said hyperlink by a user, presenting the user a choice of event type to be created;

upon selection of said choice of event type by the user, opening an application capable of creating said new event of said choice of event type; and

mapping specified fields in said document to specified fields in said new event.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein said specified fields in said document comprise subject, to, from and/or body.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein said specified fields in said new event comprise subject, attendees and/or event notes.

21. The method of claim 15, wherein said document is an email message, and wherein said step of analyzing comprises identifying a thread in said email message.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein said step of creating comprises:

determining if said defined threshold contained in said thread has been exceeded; and

if said defined threshold has been exceeded, prompting a user to create said new event.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein said prompting comprises presenting a user with a menu and, upon selection of an entry in said menu by said user, mapping specified fields in said message to specified fields in said new event.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein said defined threshold is a number of responses received in said thread or a length of time that said thread has been active.

25. The method of claim 15, wherein said document comprises an email, a peer-to-peer personal identification number (PIN) message, short message service (SMS) message, multimedia messaging service (MMS) message, an Instant Message, web page or word processing document.

26. The method of claim 15, wherein said new event comprises a calendar event or a task.

27. The method of claim 15, wherein said network communications system is a wireless network, and wherein said method is carried out in a server communicating to said wireless network.

28. The method of claim 15, wherein said network communications system is a wireless network, and wherein said method is carried out in a wireless device.

29. The method of claim 15, wherein said document is in an email and a link is inserted in the event which can be used to access the complete email from which the event was created.

30. The method of claim 15, wherein said new event has a notes section, and said creating comprising inserting a link to said document in the notes section of said new event.

31. The method of claim 30, wherein said document is an email message, and wherein said link is a MIME reference ID associated with said email message.