Systems, apparatuses, and methods for extracting inventory from unstructured electronic messages

• US 9,965,791 B1
• Filed: 04/28/2017
• Issued: 05/08/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 01/23/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Stitch Fix, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Tete-a-Tete, Inc.
• Inventors: Baxter, Gillis, Casey, Whitney
• Primary Examiner(s): Misiaszek, Michael
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ramphal, Latasha D
• Application Number:
  US15/582,531
• Time in Patent Office: 375 Days
• Field of Search: 705 26- 27
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 30/20 Design optimisation, verification or simulation optimisation, verification or simulation of circuit designs G06F30/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/083 Shipping
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0609 Buyer or seller confidence or verification
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0625 Directed, with specific intent or strategy
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0633 Lists, e.g. purchase orders, compilation or processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0635 Processing of requisition or of purchase orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/063 Content adaptation, e.g. replacement of unsuitable content
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/212 using filtering or selective blocking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34

Abstract

Disclosed are systems, methods, and devices for managing a personal user inventory. In one embodiment, the method comprises retrieving a message associated with a user identifier, the message including a body content portion; identifying a parser associated with the message; parsing the body content portion using the parser to identify an item of merchandise present within the body content portion, wherein the item of merchandise is associated with an item identifier and a set of item details; associating the item of merchandise with the user identifier; and generating a display listing merchandise associated with the user identifier, wherein the listing of merchandise includes the item of merchandise.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

retrieving, by an application server, a message associated with a user identifier, the message including a body content portion;

spawning a server-less computing device, the spawning comprising transmitting the message to a server-less architecture and executing a processing job by the server-less architecture using the message;

retrieving, by the processing job, a parser configuration file based on a sender e-mail address or sender e-mail address domain associated with the message, the parser configuration file extracted from a database of parser configuration files, the database of parser configuration files storing a mapping of parser configuration files to sender email addresses or sender e-mail address domains;

generating, by the processing job, a parser based on the parser configuration file, the generating comprising building the parser for the message based on the identified parser configuration file in response to receiving the message at the server-less computing device;

parsing, by the processing job, the body content portion using the parser to identify an item of merchandise present within the body content portion, wherein the item of merchandise is associated with an item identifier and a set of item details;

transmitting, by the processing job, the item of merchandise to the application server;

storing, by the application server, the item of merchandise and the user identifier in a database of merchandise; and

generating, by the application server, a display listing merchandise associated with the user identifier, wherein the listing of merchandise includes the item of merchandise stored in the database of merchandise.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the message comprises an e-mail message and wherein retrieving the message associated with the user identifier comprises accessing a user mailbox and retrieving an e-mail message from the user mailbox.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein retrieving the e-mail message from the user mailbox further comprises:

retrieving a set of e-mail messages in the user mailbox associated with the user identifier;

filtering the set of e-mail messages based on a pre-defined filter condition.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein parsing the body content portion to identify the item of merchandise present within the body content portion further comprises:

querying a third-party database of items using the item identifier;

receiving a set of supplemental item details from the third-party database of items, the set of supplemental item details associated with the item identifier; and

augmenting the item details with the supplemental item details.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein parsing the body content portion to identify the item of merchandise present within the body content portion further comprises:

identifying a merchant associated with the message;

identifying an agent associated with the merchant and the body content portion;

transforming the body content portion into a structured representation of the body content portion, wherein the structured representation of the body content portion includes a list of one or more items of merchandise included within the body content portion; and

selecting an item from the list of one or more items of merchandise as the item of merchandise.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein transforming the body content portion into a structured representation of the body content portion comprises transforming the body content portion using one of an XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) transform, a DOM (Document Object Model) parsing algorithm, or a plurality of XPath (Extensible Markup Language Path Language) expressions.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein parsing the body content portion using the parser to identify the item of merchandise present within the body content portion further comprises:

identifying a third-party categorization of the item of merchandise, the third-party categorization including an ordered list of category numbers and corresponding category text;

if a last category number in the ordered list of category numbers matches a known category number, associating the item of merchandise with the known category number; and

if a first category number in the ordered list of category numbers matches a known category number;

determining whether the category text corresponding to the first category number matches a pre-defined expression,

selecting a set of subcategories associated with the pre-defined expression,

prompting the user to categorize the first item based on the set of subcategories, and

associating the item of merchandise with a selected one of the set of subcategories based on input received from the user in response to the prompting.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the message comprises an image and wherein parsing the body content portion comprises:

extracting label data from the image via an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) procedure;

assigning a certainty to the label data, the certainty representing a level of accuracy of the OCR procedure;

identifying a plurality of hierarchal categories associated with the label data if the certainty of the label data is above a pre-defined threshold; and

associating the item of merchandise with one of the plurality of hierarchal categories.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the plurality of images comprises a plurality of images of purchase receipts.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the message comprises a webpage.

11. A system comprising:

an application server for retrieving a message, wherein the message is associated with a user identifier and includes a body content portion; and

a server-less computing device, spawned by a server-less architecture in response to receiving the message from the application server, for;

executing a processing job and associating the message with the processing job,

retrieving, by the processing job, a parser configuration file based on a sender e-mail address or sender e-mail address domain associated with the message, the parser configuration file extracted from a database of parser configuration files, the database of parser configuration files storing a mapping of parser configuration files to sender email addresses or sender e-mail address domains,

generating, by the processing job, a parser based on the parser configuration file, the generating comprising building the parser for the message based on the identified parser configuration file in response to receiving the message at the server-less computing device,

parsing, by the processing job, the body content portion to identify an item of merchandise present within the body content portion, wherein the item of merchandise is associated with an item identifier and a set of item details, and

transmitting, by the processing job, the item of merchandise to the application server, wherein, in response to receiving the item of merchandise, the application server is configured to;

store the item of merchandise and the user identifier in a database of merchandise, and generate a display listing merchandise associated with the user identifier, wherein the listing of merchandise includes the item of merchandise stored in the database of merchandise.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the message comprises an e-mail message and wherein retrieving a message comprises accessing a user mailbox located at a mail server and retrieving an e-mail message from the user mailbox.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein parsing the body content portion to identify the item of merchandise present within the body content portion:

querying a third-party database of items using the item identifier;

receiving a set of supplemental item details from the third-party database of items, the set of supplemental item details associated with the item identifier; and

augmenting the item details with the supplemental item details.

14. The system of claim 11 wherein parsing the body content portion to identify the item of merchandise present within the body content portion further comprises:

identifying a merchant associated with the message;

identifying an agent associated with the merchant and the body content portion;

transforming the body content portion into a structured representation of the body content portion, wherein the structured representation of the body content portion includes a list of one or more items of merchandise included within the body content portion; and

selecting an item from the list of one or more items of merchandise as the item of merchandise.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein transforming the body content portion into a structured representation of the body content portion comprises transforming the body content portion using one of an XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) transform, a DOM (Document Object Model) parsing algorithm, or a plurality of XPath (Extensible Markup Language Path Language) expressions.

16. The system of claim 11 wherein parsing the body content portion to identify the item of merchandise present within the body content portion further comprises:

identifying a third-party categorization of the item of merchandise, the third-party categorization including an ordered list of category numbers and corresponding category text;

if a last category number in the ordered list of category numbers matches a known category number, associating the item of merchandise with the known category number; and

if a first category number in the ordered list of category numbers matches a known category number;

determining whether the category text corresponding to the first category number matches a pre-defined expression,

selecting a set of subcategories associated with the pre-defined expression,

prompting the user to categorize the first item based on the set of subcategories, and

associating the item of merchandise with a selected one of the set of subcategories based on input received from the user in response to the prompting.

17. The system of claim 11 wherein the message comprises an image and wherein parsing the body content portion comprises:

extracting label data from the image via an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) procedure;

assigning a certainty to the label data, the certainty representing a level of accuracy of the OCR procedure;

identifying a plurality of hierarchal categories associated with the label data if the certainty of the label data is above a pre-defined threshold; and

associating the item of merchandise with one of the plurality of hierarchal categories.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the plurality of images comprises a plurality of images of purchase receipts.

19. The system of claim 11 wherein the message comprises a webpage.

20. A method comprising:

retrieving, by an application server, a plurality of e-mail messages associated with a user identifier;

filtering, by the application server, the plurality of e-mail messages based on a pre-defined filter condition to obtain a set of filtered e-mail messages;

selecting, by the application server, a first e-mail message from the filtered e-mail messages;

extracting, by the application server, a body content portion of the first e-mail message;

spawning a server-less computing device, the spawning comprising transmitting the first e-mail message to a server-less architecture and executing a processing job by the server-less architecture using the message;

retrieving, by the processing job, a parser configuration file based on a sender e-mail address or sender e-mail address domain associated with the first e-mail message, the parser configuration file extracted from a database of parser configuration files, the database of parser configuration files storing a mapping of parser configuration files to sender email addresses or sender e-mail address domains;

generating, by the processing job, an XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) transform associated with the first e-mail message based on the body content portion of the first e-mail message and a sender e-mail address associated with the first e-mail message, wherein the XSLT transform identifies a location or one or more items of merchandise within the body content portion of an e-mail message, the generating comprising building the XSLT transform for the first e-mail message based on the identified parser configuration file in response to receiving the first e-mail message at the server-less computing device;

parsing, by the processing job, the body content portion using the XSLT transform to identify an item of merchandise present within the body content portion, wherein the item of merchandise is associated with an item identifier and a set of item details;

transmitting, by the processing job, the item of merchandise to the application server;

storing, by the application server, the item of merchandise and the user identifier in a database of merchandise; and

generating, by the application server, a display listing merchandise associated with the user identifier, wherein the listing of merchandise includes the item of merchandise stored in the database of merchandise.