Management and prioritization of processing multiple requests

• US 8,660,843 B2
• Filed: 01/23/2013
• Issued: 02/25/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 02/04/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Falcon, Stephen Russell, Yip, Clement Chun Pong, Banay, Dan, Miller, David Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): GUERRA-ERAZO, EDGAR X
• Application Number:
  US13/747,620
• Publication Number:
  US 20130218574A1
• Time in Patent Office: 398 Days
• Field of Search: 704/235, 704/246, 704/258, 704/260, 704/270, 704/270.1, 704/275
• US Class Current: 704/235
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/26 specially adapted for navigation in a road network
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue

Abstract

Systems and methods are described for systems that utilize an interaction manager to manage interactions—also known as requests or dialogues—from one or more applications. The interactions are managed properly even if multiple applications use different grammars. The interaction manager maintains a priority for each of the interactions, such as via an interaction list, where the priority of the interactions corresponds to an order in which the interactions are to be processed. Interactions are normally processed in the order in which they are received. However, the systems and method described herein may provide a grace period after processing a first interaction and before processing a second interaction. If a third interaction that is chained to the first interaction is received during this grace period, then the third interaction may be processed before the second interaction.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

memory;

one or more processors; and

an interaction manager maintained in the memory and executable by the one or more processors to;

assign processing priorities to a plurality of requests wherein each request corresponds to a priority in which the request is to be processed, such that a first request having a higher priority is processed before a second request having a lower priority; and

provide a grace period after processing the first request, wherein in response to determining that the system receives a third request chained to the first request during the grace period, the system is configured to process the third request prior to processing the second request.

2. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the interaction manager interrupts a request currently being processed when a received request is assigned a priority higher than the interrupted request, the interrupted request resuming processing after the received request is processed.

3. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the interaction manager interrupts a request currently being processed when a received request is assigned a priority higher than the interrupted request, and the interrupted request does not resume processing after the received request is processed.

4. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein in an event a request that is currently being processed will conclude processing in less than a predetermined period of time, the interaction manager assigns a priority to a received request that is higher than that of the currently processing request but does not interrupt the currently processing request.

5. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the interaction manager interrupts a request currently being processed if the currently processing request will not conclude processing for more than a predetermined period of time.

6. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the interaction manager is further configured to assign a lowest priority to a received request unless:

in an event the interaction manager detects an indication to elevate the priority of the received request, the interaction manager is configured to assign a highest priority to the received request ahead of other previously received requests, and in an event the interaction manager detects an interruption flag in the received request, the interaction manager is configured to assign the highest priority to the received request.

7. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein a server is configured to identify a speech-enabled application associated with a request having a highest priority by recognizing a specific grammar, in an event the identified speech-enabled application associated with the request at the highest priority is not previously loaded into a memory associated with the system, the server loads the speech-enabled application into a memory associated with the system.

8. The system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a master grammar table having a specific grammar for each control that is registered with the system where a control corresponds to an application and where a control is a set of code modules that performs functions, wherein a grammar identifier is associated with each specific grammar and uniquely identifies the particular specific grammar.

9. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the grace period is a predetermined grace period that is provided before beginning to process the second request.

18. The speech system as recited in claim 1, wherein the system further comprises an announcer control that includes a post delay that enables the system to pause between interactions.

19. The speech system as recited in claim 1, wherein the system further comprises an announcer control that includes an abort interrupted property that enables the system to self-destruct an interaction that is interrupted in an event the interaction manager detects an interruption flag in the received interaction.

20. The system as recited in claim 8, wherein each specific grammar is associated with an active flag that, when cleared, deactivates the particular specific grammar from the master grammar table thereby enabling the each specific grammar to be interrupted by another application or by the system.

10. A method comprising:

receiving, by one or more computing devices, a first request;

determining, by at least one of the one or more computing devices, if the first request is an interrupting request;

assigning, by at least one of the one or more computing devices, a first priority to the first request,

when it is determined that the first request is an interrupting request, assigning, by at least one of the one or more computing devices, a second priority to the first request, where the second priority is higher than the first priority;

processing, by at least one of the one or more computing devices, the first request when it has been assigned the second priority;

waiting, by at least one of the one or more computing devices, a grace period after the first request is processed before beginning processing of a second request;

receiving, by at least one of the one or more computing devices, a third request chained to the first request; and

processing, by at least one of the one or more computing devices, the third request prior to processing the second request provided that the third request is received during the grace period.

11. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein processing the first request includes identifying an application associated with the first request and if the application is not loaded, then loading the application and loading a specific grammar for the application, and wherein the specific grammar has a grammar identifier associated with the specific grammar and which uniquely identifies the specific grammar, and wherein the grammar identifier is used with the first request to identify the specific grammar corresponding to the application.

12. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the first request is included within list, the list being a list of pointers to memory locations that contain a plurality of requests submitted to the list.

13. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the determining if the first request is an interrupting request further comprises checking for the presence of an interruption flag in the first request that, if present, indicates that the first request is an interrupting request.

14. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the third request is associated with content that is related to content associated with the first request.

15. One or more computer storage media containing computer executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

maintaining an interaction list that includes multiple interactions;

determining an order of the interaction list that corresponds to a priority in which the multiple interactions are to be processed;

processing a first interaction when the first interaction is located at a first position in the order of the interaction list;

receiving a second interaction;

determining if the second interaction is an interrupting interaction;

in response to determining that the second interaction is not an interrupting interaction, placing the second interaction at a second position in the order of the interaction list that has a lower priority than the first position;

in response to determining that the second interaction is an interrupting interaction, placing the second interaction at a third position in the order of the interaction list that has a higher priority than the first position and processing the second interaction;

receiving a third interaction from the first speech-enabled application; and

in response to determining that the third interaction is received during a pre-determined grace period after processing of the first interaction, processing the third interaction prior to processing the second interaction.

16. The one or more computer storage media as recited in claim 15, wherein the first interaction is associated with a first grammar and the second interaction is associated with a second grammar.

17. The one or more computer storage media as recited in claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise identifying a speech-enabled application associated with at least one of the multiple interactions by using a grammar identifier that identifies the speech-enabled application and corresponding application grammar, wherein if the speech-enabled application is not loaded, then loading the speech-enabled application and loading a specific application grammar for the speech-enabled application into a master grammar table.