System and method for extracting calendar events from free-form email

• US 8,832,205 B2
• Filed: 11/02/2009
• Issued: 09/09/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 11/02/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Lextine Software, LLC
• Original Assignee: Lextine Software, LLC
• Inventors: Nelson, Marie-France, Tannenbaum, Lee, Bhowal, Debarshi, Sharma, Mahesh
• Primary Examiner(s): TRUONG, LAN DAI T
• Application Number:
  US12/610,757
• Publication Number:
  US 20110106892A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,772 Days
• Field of Search: 709/206, 709/203, 709/205, 709/207
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting

Abstract

A system and method are described for automatically detecting calendar events within a free-form email message. For example, a system according to one embodiment of the invention for automatically detecting calendar events within a free-form email message potentially including one or more attachments comprising: a pre-processor to detect one or more keywords within a free-form email message and/or free-form attachments, the keywords indicating whether the free-form email message or free-form attachments contain a calendar event, the pre-processor identifying the free-form email message and/or free-form attachments as potentially containing calendar data upon detecting the one or more keywords; and a natural language processor to further process text from the free-form email message and/or free-form attachments to determine whether the free-form email message and/or free-form attachments contain a calendar event, the natural language processor to parse the email message and/or attachments and evaluate the email message and/or attachments using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to determine the existence of one or more calendar events; and a calendar event generator to extract calendar data from the email message and/or attachments in response to the natural language processor detecting a calendar event, the calendar event generator to update a calendar using the extracted calendar data.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a memory to store instructions;

a processor configured to execute the instructions causes the system to automatically detect calendar events included within a free-form email message that potentially including one or more free-form attachments;

an email processor component generated by software program code executed by the processor, the email processor component having;

an email fetcher configured to fetch email messages from an email server;

an email/and attachment pre-processor configured to detect one or more keywords within a free-form email message and free-form attachments;

wherein the keywords indicate whether the free-form email message or free-form attachments contain a calendar event, and a pre-processor identifies the free-form email message or free-form attachments as potentially containing calendar data upon detecting the one or more keywords; and

a natural language processing component configured to parse the free-form email messages and free-form attachments to identify calendar events from detected keywords, the natural language processing component processing text from detected keywords which contain calendar events by implementing processes of parsing the free-form email message and free form attachments to detect keywords indicating calendar events and evaluating the free form email message and free form attachments using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to determine the existence of one or more calendar events, wherein the natural language processing (NLP) techniques use the text and other data formats to determine calendar events from the free-form email message and the free-form attachments; and

a calendar event generator configured to extract calendar data in response to the step of detecting a calendar event from the natural language processing component, generating calendar entries from the extracted calendar data, and update a calendar with the generated calendar entries;

wherein the free-form email comprises a message entered by a sender without regard to a predefined structural format and potentially including one or more free-form attachments text and other data formats; and

wherein the free-form email and free-form attachments are formed in text form and other data formats which are not arranged according to a predefined structural format;

a notification service generated by software program code executed by the processor, the notification service generating and transmitting notifications of new or updated calendar events generated by the calendar service.

2. The system as in claim 1 wherein notifications are transmitted via email and SMS messages.