Personalized navigation shortcuts

• US 9,311,417 B2
• Filed: 03/09/2012
• Issued: 04/12/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/09/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Alexander, Jeffrey H., Haberl, Karl R., Green, Stephen J.
• Primary Examiner(s): SHIU, HO T
• Application Number:
  US13/415,979
• Publication Number:
  US 20130238783A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,495 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with generating suggested shortcuts are described. In one embodiment, a method includes identifying a user that accesses an intranet portal and tracking navigation paths taken by the user within the intranet portal. The navigation paths are stored in a user profile associated with the user, where the navigation paths indicate a sequence of visited locations and a destination location for the sequence. When the user visits a location within the intranet portal, a list of suggested destination locations are generated as navigation shortcuts to allow the user to directly access a desired destination.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform functions, the computer-executable instructions comprising:

instructions for providing access to an intranet portal;

instructions for identifying a user that accesses the intranet portal;

instructions for, for the user accessing the intranet portal, tracking navigation paths taken by the user within the intranet portal;

instructions for storing the navigation paths in a user profile associated with the user, wherein the navigation paths are stored to indicate a sequence of visited locations, wherein a navigation path includes a starting location, intermediate locations, and a destination location for the sequence; and

instructions for, when the user visits a location within the intranet portal, generating a list of suggested destination locations by comparing a current sequence of visited locations with the stored sequences of visited locations to identify matching sequences and returning the destination locations stored in the user profile associated with the matching sequences;

instructions for transmitting to a device for displaying on a display screen, the generated list of suggested destination locations in addition to webpage content from the location being visited;

instructions for, in response to a destination location being selected from the generated list, navigating directly to the destination location from the location without navigating through the intermediate locations; and

instructions for, in response to the user leaving the location and visiting a second location, recalculating the list of suggested destination locations and deleting destination locations that are no longer part of the matching sequences that include the second location, and transmitting the recalculated list of suggested destination locations to the device for display on the display screen.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising instructions for determining the navigation path as a path from a root location in the intranet portal to the visited location including a sequence of visited locations in between.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising instructions for determining the navigation path as a path from a first visited location to a second visited location that has been navigated by the user;

and

wherein the navigation profile is searched to find a corresponding path including the first visited location and the second visited location.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising computer-executable instructions configured for assigning a weight to the navigation paths in the user profile based on a frequency that the user follows a selected path;

and ranking the list of suggested destination locations based at least in part on the weight.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising computer-executable instructions configured for changing the list of suggested destination locations upon the user visiting a new location.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising computer-executable instructions configured for storing the navigation paths in the user profile as a tree of paths wherein leaf nodes in the tree represent destination locations from an associated path;

and

computer-executable instructions configured for, when the user visits the second location within the intranet portal, the deleting of the destination locations that are no longer possible includes pruning the generated list of suggested destination locations by removing leaf nodes that are not part of the tree under the visited location.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising computer-executable instructions configured for displaying the list of suggested destination locations as navigation shortcuts to the suggested destination locations on a display screen;

and

wherein the navigation shortcuts are links that are not pre-existing webpage content of a webpage of the location being visited by the user.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the intranet portal contains content for a corporate enterprise with access restricted to authorized users.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising computer-executable instructions configured for storing the navigation paths in a user profile associated with the user in a non-transitory storage device.

10. A computing system, comprising:

a processor;

at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium connected to at least the processor by a communication bus;

tracking logic, stored in the at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium, and configured to be executable by the processor to cause the computer system to track navigation paths of a user in an intranet portal and store the navigation paths in a navigation profile for the user, wherein the navigation paths indicate a sequence of visited locations and a destination location for each sequence;

shortcut suggestion logic, stored in the at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium, configured to be executable by the processor to cause the computer system to determine suggested destination locations to the user based on the navigation profile of the user and a current visited path taken by the user in the intranet portal, wherein the suggested destinations are likely destinations based on a current location of the user in the intranet portal;

wherein the shortcut suggestion logic is further configured to

cause the suggested destinations to be displayed on a display screen as navigation shortcuts, wherein the navigation shortcuts are links that are not pre-existing links in webpage content of the current location; and

in response to the user leaving the current location and visiting a second location in the intranet portal, (i) recalculate the suggested destination locations and delete destination locations that are no longer part of the navigation path that includes the second location, and (ii) transmit the recalculated suggested destination locations for display on the display screen;

wherein the tracking logic and the shortcut suggestion logic are implemented having at least stored instructions for execution by the processor.

11. The computing system of claim 10, wherein the navigation path is determined as a path from a first visited location to a second visited location that has been navigated by the user;

and

wherein the shortcut suggestion logic is configured to search the navigation profile of the user to find a corresponding path including the first visited location and the second visited location, where the corresponding path includes other visited locations that lead to the destination location of the path.

12. The computing system of claim 10, wherein the shortcut suggestion logic is configured to generate the navigation shortcut as a direct link to an associated destination location.

13. The computing system of claim 10, wherein the tracking logic is configured to store the navigation paths in the navigation profile for a user as a tree of paths wherein leaf nodes in the tree represent destination locations from an associated path;

and

wherein when the user visits a location within the intranet portal, the shortcut suggestion logic is configured to prune the generated list of suggested destination locations by removing leaf nodes that are not part of the tree under the visited location.

14. The computing system of claim 10, wherein shortcut suggestion logic configured to recalculate the suggested destination locations for display when the user moves to the second location in the intranet portal based on matching navigation paths from the navigation profile.

15. A computer-implemented method performed by a computer including at least one processor, the method comprising:

for individual users, maintaining a stored navigation profile corresponding to a user wherein the navigation profile includes a history of navigation paths taken by the user within an intranet portal of the computer for accessing an intranet, wherein the navigation paths indicate a sequence of visited locations in the intranet that include a starting location, one or more intermediate locations, and a destination location for each sequence;

identifying, by at least the processor by verifying input identification information, a user that accesses the intranet portal and identifying the navigation profile corresponding to the identified user;

tracking, by at least the processor, a visited link path followed by the user in the intranet portal and, for a visited location, comparing the visited link path to the navigation paths stored in the navigation profile to identify a matching path;

based on the matching path in the navigation profile, determining and generating, by at least the processor, destination locations in computerized form that belong to the matching path and transmitting to a device for displaying on a display, the destination locations to the user as a suggested list of likely destinations from the visited location,

wherein the destination locations are displayed as navigation shortcuts that are not pre-existing links in content of the visited location;

in response to a destination location being selected from the displayed list, navigating directly to the destination location from the visited location without navigating through the intermediate locations, wherein the navigating is performed with network communications in the intranet; and

in response to the user leaving the visited location and visiting a second location in the intranet portal, (i) recalculating the suggested list of likely destinations and deleting one or more destination locations from the suggested list that no longer belong to the matching path that includes the second location, and (ii) transmitting and displaying the recalculated suggested list of likely destinations on the display screen.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising determining, by at least the processor, the visited link path as a path from a root location in the intranet portal to the visited location including a sequence of visited locations in between.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising determining the visited link path as a path from a first visited location to a second visited location that has been navigated by the user;

and

wherein the navigation profile is searched, by at least the processor, to find a corresponding path including the first visited location and the second visited location.

18. The method of claim 15, further comprising assigning a weight to the navigation paths stored in the navigation profile based on a frequency that the user follows each navigation path;

and

instructions for displaying the suggested list of likely destinations as a ranked list according to the assigned weight.

19. The method of claim 15, further comprising providing access to the intranet portal.

20. The method of claim 15, further comprising storing, by at least the processor, the navigation profiles for each user in a non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein the sequence of visited locations for each stored navigation path in a navigation profile includes a starting location visited by the user, intermediate visited locations, and a destination location for the sequence.