Extracting purchase-related information from digital documents

• US 9,563,915 B2
• Filed: 04/13/2015
• Issued: 02/07/2017
• 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): Mejia, Anthony
• Assistant Examiner(s): Nguyen, Linh T
• Application Number:
  US14/684,658
• Publication Number:
  US 20150235301A1
• Time in Patent Office: 666 Days
• Field of Search: 709/201, 709/219, 709/206, 709/207, 709/203, 709/238, 705/26.1, 705/27.2, 705/14.23, 705/26.41, 705/330
• 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 entails 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 electronic messages concerning respective product orders in respective collections of electronic messages transmitted between network nodes and stored in one or more non-transitory networked electronic message storage systems;

for each of respective ones of the identified electronic messages,

selecting a respective extraction parser corresponding to the identified electronic message, wherein each extraction parser is generated from a respective template defining a respective context-free grammar that describes a respective format of an electronic message body comprising an ordered arrangement of unstructured free form text elements, and

applying, by a processor, the selected extraction parser to unstructured free form text in a body portion of the identified electronic message to extract therefrom a respective set of product order related data values corresponding to a predefined set of purchase order related data field types;

storing the sets of extracted product order related data values as aggregated data in a non-transitory networked data storage system;

for each of respective ones of the sets of extracted product order related data values, retrieving additional information concerning product order information missing from the respective set of extracted product order related data values based on one or more of the extracted product order related data values in the respective set of extracted product order related data values; and

augmenting the aggregated data with the retrieved additional information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the identified purchase-related electronic messages comprise electronic mail messages.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein, for each of one or more of the sets of extracted product order related data values:

the retrieving comprises retrieving a respective image of an ordered product corresponding to the respective product order from a remote server; and

the augmenting comprises augmenting the aggregated data with the retrieved image.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein, for each of one or more of the sets of extracted product order related data values, the retrieving comprises retrieving a respective shipping status of the respective product order from a respective one of the identified electronic messages.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein, for each of one or more of the sets of extracted product order related data values, the retrieving comprises retrieving a respective delivery status of the respective product order from a respective one of the identified electronic messages.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein, for each of one or more of the sets of extracted product order related data values, the retrieving comprises retrieving a respective last date to return an ordered product corresponding to the respective product order.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the selecting of the respective extraction parser is based on identification of a type of the respective identified electronic message selected from a predefined set of electronic message types.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the predefined set of electronic message types comprises an order confirmation message type and a shipping confirmation message type.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein, for each of one or more of the product orders:

the storing comprises, in a respective database record, storing a respective one of the sets of product order related data values extracted from a respective electronic message concerning the product order and corresponding to the order confirmation message type;

the retrieving comprises retrieving shipping information from a respective electronic message concerning the product order and corresponding to the shipping confirmation message type; and

the augmenting comprises incorporating the retrieved shipping information into the respective database record.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising, for each of respective ones of the identified electronic messages corresponding to the order confirmation message type, the applying comprises extracting purchase order related information comprising one or more of an order number, a product description, a product name, a product price, and an order total.

11. The method of claim 8, further comprising, for each of respective ones of the identified electronic messages corresponding to the shipping confirmation message type, the applying comprises extracting purchase-related information comprising one or more of a tracking number, a shipping address, a billing address, an estimated shipping date, and an estimated delivery date.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising, in response to a request from a client network node associated with a user, transmitting data for displaying on the client network node a view based on the augmented aggregated data comprising purchase-related information extracted from respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages and additional information concerning missing product order information retrieved based on respective ones of the sets of extracted purchase-related information.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

to a client network node associated with a user, transmitting data for generating a view on the augmented aggregated data associated with the user grouped by individual ordered product.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

for each of multiple merchants, determining at least one respective template that defines a respective context-free grammar that describes a respective language and a respective format of a purchase-related electronic message body based on an instance of a purchase-related electronic message associated with the merchant; and

converting, by a processor, each template into a respective extraction parser that is associated with the respective merchant based on the respective context-free grammar.

15. 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 electronic messages concerning respective product orders in respective collections of electronic messages transmitted between network nodes and stored in one or more non-transitory networked electronic message storage systems;

for each of respective ones of the identified electronic messages,

selecting a respective extraction parser corresponding to the identified electronic message, wherein each extraction parser is generated from a respective template defining a respective context-free grammar that describes a respective format of an electronic message body comprising an ordered arrangement of unstructured free form text elements, and

applying, by a processor, the selected extraction parser to unstructured free form text in a body portion of the identified electronic message to extract therefrom a respective set of product order related data values corresponding to a predefined set of purchase order related data field types;

storing the sets of extracted product order related data values as aggregated data in a non-transitory networked data storage system;

for each of respective ones of the sets of extracted product order related data values, retrieving additional information concerning product order information missing from the respective set of extracted product order related data values based on one or more of the extracted product order related data values in the respective set of extracted product order related data values; and

augmenting the aggregated data with the retrieved additional information.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein, based at least in part on the execution of the instructions, the processor is operable to perform operations further comprising, in response to a request from a client network node associated with a user, transmitting data for displaying on the client network node a view based on the augmented aggregated data comprising purchase-related information extracted from respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages and additional information concerning missing product order information retrieved based on respective ones of the sets of extracted purchase-related information.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein, based at least in part on the execution of the instructions, the processor is operable to perform operations further comprising:

to a client network node associated with a user, transmitting data for generating a view on the augmented aggregated data associated with the user grouped by individual ordered product.

18. 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 electronic messages concerning respective product orders in respective collections of electronic messages transmitted between network nodes and stored in one or more non-transitory networked electronic message storage systems;

for each of respective ones of the identified electronic messages,

selecting a respective extraction parser corresponding to the identified electronic message, wherein each extraction parser is generated from a respective template defining a respective context-free grammar that describes a respective format of an electronic message body comprising an ordered arrangement of unstructured free form text elements, and

applying, by a processor, the selected extraction parser to unstructured free form text in a body portion of the identified electronic message to extract therefrom a respective set of product order related data values corresponding to a predefined set of purchase order related data field types;

storing the sets of extracted product order related data values as aggregated data in a non-transitory networked data storage system;

for each of respective ones of the sets of extracted product order related data values, retrieving additional information concerning product order information missing from the respective set of extracted product order related data values based on one or more of the extracted product order related data values in the respective set of extracted product order related data values; and

augmenting the aggregated data with the retrieved additional information.

19. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18 comprising instructions, which when executed by computer apparatus, cause the computer apparatus to perform operations further comprising:

in response to a request from a client network node associated with a user, transmitting data for displaying on the client network node a view based on the augmented aggregated data comprising purchase-related information extracted from respective ones of the identified purchase-related electronic messages and additional information concerning missing product order information retrieved based on respective ones of the sets of extracted purchase-related information.

20. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18 comprising instructions, which when executed by computer apparatus, cause the computer apparatus to perform operations further comprising:

to a client network node associated with a user, transmitting data for generating a view on the augmented aggregated data associated with the user grouped by individual ordered product.