Method and apparatus for generating a new event directly from a document

• US 9,721,234 B2
• Filed: 01/29/2016
• Issued: 08/01/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Blackberry Limited
• Original Assignee: Blackberry Limited
• Inventors: Hardy, Michael Thomas, Vanden Heuvel, David Noel, Luu, Lap, May, Darrell Reginald
• Primary Examiner(s): Spieler, William
• Application Number:
  US15/011,073
• Publication Number:
  US 20160148169A1
• Time in Patent Office: 550 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/123 Storage facilities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/295 Named entity recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1097 Task assignment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/046 Interoperability with other network applications or services

Abstract

An event providing apparatus includes a storage device in communicating with a date/time detector module. The detector module detects a condition that at least a portion of information stored on the storage device could be mapped to an event, identifies date and time entries in the information, and generates a hyperlink to open an application for creating an event for each entry, the date and time being provided to the application to generate the event directly from the information. The apparatus also includes a display for displaying the time and date in the form of the hyperlink; and a prompter module communicating with the detector module for automatically providing a prompt related to the event in response to selection of the hyperlink. In response to user interaction with the user prompt, the application is started and the event based on the hyperlinked date and time is created.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a user selection to display an electronic message;

identifying a temporal expression in the electronic message;

displaying a body of the electronic message in response to the user selection, wherein without receiving further user input the displaying comprises, translating plain text associated with the identified temporal expression into a hyperlink for the identified temporal expression;

receiving, during the displaying of the body, a first input that indicates selection of the hyperlink;

in response to receipt of the first input that indicates selection of the hyperlink, displaying a menu with a choice to create the event;

receiving, during the displaying of the menu, a second input that indicates selection of the choice to create the event;

in response to receipt of the second input, displaying a data entry interface based on receipt of the input, the data entry interface configured with a temporal field that is populated with the temporal expression and a meeting privacy setting that is set based on a category of a sender of the electronic message;

receiving, during the displaying of the data entry interface, a third input that indicates acceptance of information in the data entry interface, the information including the temporal expression; and

storing, in response to the another input, an event based on the information.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising mapping text in the electronic message to another field of the data entry interface.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein mapping text comprises associating a subject of the electronic message with a subject field of the data entry interface, and associating at least one of a sender of the electronic message and a recipient of the electronic message with an attendee field of the data entry field.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying comprises identifying a format of the temporal expression, and matching the format to an entry in a lookup table by extracting the entry from the lookup table, and inserting the entry into the temporal field of the data entry interface.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the temporal expression comprises a date expression, wherein identifying comprises processing the electronic message to identify a relative date expression in the electronic message, and wherein the temporal field is populated based on an inferred date.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein processing comprises processing the electronic message using a lexical analyzer and a parser to identify the relative date expression in the electronic message.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the relative date expression includes at least one of today, tomorrow, yesterday, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic message is one of an email, a peer-to-peer personal identification number (PIN) message, a short message service (SMS) message, a multimedia messaging service (MMS) message, and an instant message (IM).

9. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying comprises identifying a plurality of temporal expressions in the electronic message, and wherein for each of the plurality of temporal expressions identified, the body includes an associated distinct hyperlink.

10. The method of claim 9, comprising displaying a further data entry interface based on receipt of selection of one of the hyperlinks associated with one of the plurality of temporal expressions, the further data entry interface configured with a temporal field that is populated with the one of the plurality of temporal expressions, receiving, during the displaying of the further data entry interface, input that indicates acceptance of information in the data entry interface, the information including the one of the plurality of temporal expressions, and storing, in response to the input, a further event based on the information.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the event is one of a calendar event and a task event.

12. An electronic device comprising:

a display;

an input device;

a microprocessor configured for;

receiving a user selection to display an electronic message;

identifying a temporal expression in the electronic message;

displaying a body of the electronic message in response to the user selection, wherein without receiving further user input the displaying comprises, translating plain text associated with the identified temporal expression into a hyperlink for the identified temporal expression;

receiving, during the displaying of the body, a first input that indicates selection of the hyperlink;

in response to receipt of the first input that indicates selection of the hyperlink, displaying a menu with a choice to create the event;

receiving, during the displaying of the menu, a second input that indicates selection of the choice to create the event;

in response to receipt of the second input, displaying a data entry interface based on receipt of the input, the data entry interface configured with a temporal field that is populated with the temporal expression and a meeting privacy setting that is set based on a category of a sender of the electronic message;

receiving, during the displaying of the data entry interface, a third input that indicates acceptance of information in the data entry interface, the information including the temporal expression; and

storing, in response to the another input, an event based on the information.

13. The electronic device of claim 12, wherein the electronic device is one of a server and a wireless device.

14. The electronic device of claim 12, wherein the microprocessor is further configured for mapping text in the electronic message to another field of the data entry interface.

15. The electronic device of claim 12, wherein identifying comprises identifying a format of the temporal expression, and matching the format to an entry in a lookup table by extracting the entry from the lookup table, and inserting the entry into the temporal field of the data entry interface.

16. The electronic device of claim 12, wherein the temporal expression comprises a date expression, wherein identifying comprises processing the electronic message to identify a relative date expression in the electronic message, and wherein the temporal field is populated based on an inferred date.

17. The electronic device of claim 16, wherein processing comprises processing the electronic message using a lexical analyzer and a parser to identify the relative date expression in the electronic message.

18. The electronic device of claim 17, wherein the relative date expression includes at least one of today, tomorrow, yesterday, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night.

19. A storage device storing non-transitory computer-readable code executable by a processor of an electronic device for:

receiving a user selection to display an electronic message;

identifying a temporal expression in the electronic message;

displaying a body of the electronic message in response to the user selection, wherein without receiving further user input the displaying comprises, translating plain text associated with the identified temporal expression into a hyperlink for the identified temporal expression;

receiving, during the displaying of the body, a first input that indicates selection of the hyperlink;

in response to receipt of the first input that indicates selection of the hyperlink, displaying a menu with a choice to create the event;

receiving, during the displaying of the menu, a second input that indicates selection of the choice to create the event;

in response to receipt of the second input, displaying a data entry interface based on receipt of the input, the data entry interface configured with a temporal field that is populated with the temporal expression and a meeting privacy setting that is set based on a category of a sender of the electronic message;

receiving, during the displaying of the data entry interface, a third input that indicates acceptance of information in the data entry interface, the information including the temporal expression; and

storing, in response to the another input, an event based on the information.