Extracting purchase-related information from electronic messages

• US 9,508,054 B2
• Filed: 04/13/2015
• Issued: 11/29/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/19/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nielsen Consumer LLC (Nielsen Holdings plc)
• Original Assignee: Slice Technologies, Inc. (Rakuten Group, Inc.)
• Inventors: Brady, Scott J., Suppe, Benjamin A., Botto, Eric J., Madan, Harpinder Singh, Mastierov, Ievgen, Khosla, Aditya, Mykhaylov, Dmytry B., Verbytskyi, Georgii, Lototsky, Alexander, Mantel, Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): Survillo, Oleg
• Assistant Examiner(s): Nguyen, Linh T
• Application Number:
  US14/684,954
• Publication Number:
  US 20150235166A1
• Time in Patent Office: 596 Days
• Field of Search: 709/204, 709/227, 709/246, 709/206, 709/207, 709/213, 709/217, 709/219, 705/26.1, 705/14.51
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9558 Details of hyperlinks; Management of linked annotations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08 Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/083 Shipping
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0833 Tracking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0838 Historical data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0635 Processing of requisition or of purchase orders
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/063 Content adaptation, e.g. replacement of unsuitable content
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/10 Multimedia information

Abstract

Product order and shipping information received via email messages is automatically aggregated for ready user review. Once the user is authenticated, authorization to access their email mailbox is obtained and the email message headers of their emails are analyzed to identify those messages of interest. The bodies of the email messages of interest are parsed to extract the product order and shipping information which is stored and presented for display to the user typically grouped by individual product thus greatly simplifying user review of orders. The aggregated product order and shipping information can be augmented with additional information such as shipping status, delivery status, a product image, and/or a last date that the product can be returned.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

identifying purchase-related electronic messages in a collection of electronic messages transmitted between network nodes and stored in a first non transitory networked data storage location;

for each of respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages, ascertaining a respective template corresponding to the identified purchase-related electronic message, wherein each template defines an ordered arrangement of unstructured free form text elements describing a respective electronic message body format;

converting, by a processor, the templates into respective extraction parsers;

extracting, by a processor, purchase-related information corresponding to a set of purchase-related data field types from unstructured free form text in body portions of respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages, wherein the extracting comprises, with the extraction parsers, respectively parsing the unstructured free form text in the body portions of the respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages based on the unstructured free form text elements defined in the respective templates to output data corresponding to the set of purchase-related data field types, wherein the extracted purchase-related information relates to purchased products;

storing the extracted purchase-related information as aggregated data in a second non-transitory networked data storage location;

wherein the storing comprises aggregating the extracted purchase-related information in product purchased;

for each of respective ones of the purchased products associated with a user, based on the purchase-related information that is extracted for the purchased product, for the purchased product, and augmenting the aggregated data with the retrieved purchased-related information;

and

in response to a request from a client network node associated with the user, transmitting data for displaying a view on the aggregated data on the client network node, wherein, in response to the request from the client network node associated with the user, the transmitting comprises transmitting to the client network specification, a view on the augmented aggregated data comprising purchase-related information that is extracted for the respective purchased products and the retrieved additional purchase-related information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying comprises identifying each of respective ones of the purchase-related electronic messages based on matching a sender portion of the electronic message to a merchant identifier in a predefined set of merchant identifiers and matching text extracted from a subject portion of the electronic message to predefined purchase-related keyword text.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the ascertaining comprises selecting the template from a set of predefined templates associated with the matched merchant identifier and the matched subject portion text, wherein each template in the set corresponds to an ordered arrangement of unstructured free form text elements describing a respective electronic message body format.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the extracting comprises matching the ordered arrangement of unstructured free form text elements describing the electronic message body formats of the corresponding templates to unstructured free form text elements in the body portions of the respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the storing comprises aggregating the purchase-related information extracted from identified ones of the electronic messages associated with a particular user, and the transmitting comprises transmitting data for displaying a purchase summary view for the particular user.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying comprises identifying purchase-related order confirmation electronic messages and purchase-related shipping confirmation electronic messages in the collection of electronic messages.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the view on the extracted purchase-related information shows extracted purchase-related information aggregated by product purchased.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein, for each of one or more of the respective purchased products:

the extracted purchase-related information comprises information identifying the purchased product;

the retrieving comprises retrieving an image of the purchased product from a remote server based on the information identifying the purchased product;

the augmenting comprises augmenting the aggregated data with the image of the purchased product; and

the view on the augmented aggregated data comprises the image of the purchased product.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein, for each of one or more of the respective purchased products:

the extracted purchase-related information comprises information identifying a vendor;

the retrieving comprises retrieving shipping status information for the purchased product from a website associated with the vendor based on the information identifying the vendor;

the augmenting comprises augmenting the aggregated data with the shipping status information for the purchased product; and

the view on the augmented aggregated data comprises the shipping status information for the purchased product.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein, for each of one or more of the respective purchased products;

the extracted purchase-related information comprises information identifying a shipper;

the retrieving comprises retrieving delivery status information for the purchased product from a website associated with the shipper based on the information identifying the shipper;

the augmenting comprises augmenting the aggregated data with the delivery status information for the purchased product; and

the view on the augmented aggregated data comprises the delivery status information for the purchased product.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic messages in the collection are electronic mail messages.

12. A system, comprising a non-transitory memory storing processor-readable instructions, and a processor coupled to the memory, operable to execute the instructions, and based at least in part on the execution of the instructions operable to perform operations comprising:

identifying purchase-related electronic messages in a collection of electronic messages transmitted between network nodes and stored in a first non-transitory networked data storage location;

for each of respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages ascertaining a respective template corresponding to the identified purchase-related, electronic message, wherein each template defines an ordered arrangement of unstructured free form text elements describing a respective electronic message body format;

converting, by a processor, the templates into respective extraction parsers;

extracting, by a processor, purchase-related information corresponding to a set of purchase-related data field types from unstructured free form text in body portions of respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages, wherein the free form text in the body portions of the respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages based on the unstructured free form text elements defined in the respective templates to output data corresponding to the set of purchase-related data field types, n herein the extracted purchase-related information relates to purchased products;

storing the extracted purchase-related information as aggregated data in a second non-transitory networked data storage location, wherein the storing comprises aggregating the extracted purchase-related information in product purchased,

for each of respective ones of the purchased products associated with a user, based on the purchase-related information that is extracted for the purchased product, retrieving additional purchase-related information for display in a predefined purchase history display specification but missing from the purchase-related information extracted for the purchased product, and augmenting the aggregated data with the retrieved purchased-related information;

and

in response to a request from a client network node associated with the user, transmitting data for displaying a view on the aggregated data on the client network node, wherein, in response to the request from the client network node associated with the user, the transmitting comprises transmitting to the client network node data for displaying, according to the predefined purchase history display specification, a view on extracted for the respective purchased products and the retrieved additional purchase-related information.

13. At least one non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions, which when executed by computer apparatus, cause the computer apparatus to perform operations comprising:

identifying purchase-related electronic messages in a collection of electronic messages transmitted between network nodes and stored in a first non-transitory networked data storage location;

for each of respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages ascertaining a respective template corresponding to the identified purchase-related, electronic message, wherein each template defines an ordered arrangement of unstructured free form text elements describing a respective electronic message body format;

converting, by a processor, the templates into respective extraction parsers;

extracting, by a processor, purchase-related information corresponding to a set of purchase-related data field types from unstructured free form text in body portions of respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages, wherein the extracting comprises, with the extraction parsers, respectively parsing the unstructured free form text in the body portions of the respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages based on the unstructured free form text elements defined in the respective templates to output data corresponding to the set of purchase-related data field types, n herein the extracted purchase-related information relates to purchased products;

storing the extracted purchase-related information as aggregated data in a second non-transitory networked data storage location, wherein the storing comprises aggregating the extracted purchase-related information in product purchased,

for each of respective ones of the purchased products associated with a user, based on the purchase-related information that is extracted for the purchased product, retrieving additional purchase-related information for display in a predefined purchase history display specification but missing from the purchase-related information extracted for the purchased product, and augmenting the aggregated data with the retrieved purchased-related information,

and

in response to a request from a client network node associated with the user, transmitting data for displaying a view on the aggregated data on the client network node, wherein, in response to the request from the client network node associated with the user, the transmitting comprises transmitting to the client network node data for displaying, according to the predefined purchase history display specification, a view on the augmented aggregated data comprising purchase-related Information that is extracted for the respective purchased products and the retrieved additional purchase-related information.