NOTIFICATION PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE

• US 20070214228A1
• Filed: 05/16/2007
• Published: 09/13/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 03/16/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Horvitz, Eric, Jacobs, Andrew, Kadie, Carl, Hovel, David
• Granted Patent: US 7,975,015 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/207
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to enable a variety of information associated with one or more notification sources to be directed to one or more notification sinks via a notification platform architecture. The architecture includes a context analyzer for determining a user'"'"'s state such as location and attentional focus, wherein the user'"'"'s state is employed by a notification manager to make decisions regarding what, when and how information generated by the notification sources should be forwarded to the notification sinks, for example. These decisions can include a cost benefit analysis wherein considerations are given as to whether the benefits of notifying the user are outweighed by the costs of disrupting the user. Decision-theoretic policies and/or somewhat less formal heuristic policies can be employed to enable the decision-making process within the notification manager.

Claims

1. A notification system, comprising:

a context analyzer to determine a context associated with an entity; and

a notification manager to convey one or more notifications to the entity based at least in part on the determined context.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one of:

at least one notification source to generate the one or more notifications; and

at least one notification sink to receive the one or more notifications;

wherein the context analyzer accesses and stores information regarding context information and notification parameters.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the entity comprises at least one of a user, an agent, a process, a server, a computer, a machine, a company, an organization, a business, a computer program, a service, and a thread.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the one or more notifications generated by the at least one notification source are intended for the entity.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein the notifications received by the at least one sink are provided to the entity.

6. The system of claim 2, wherein the context analyzer comprises a notification parameters store to store default notification preferences for the entity as a profile.

7. The system of claim 2, wherein the context analyzer determines a current context of a user, based on at least one context source.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the at least one context source comprises one or more of:

visual information of the user, desktop information of the user, personal-information-manager (PIM) information of the user, current time and day, mobile device usage of the user, and location of the user.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the context analyzer determines the current context based on the at least one context source by utilizing one or more of:

a statistical model, a profile, a direct access of user location and activity, and a real-time user specification of user state.

10. The system of claim 2, wherein the notifications generated by the at least one notification source comprises one or more of:

e-mail, instant messaging, system messages, automated assistance, results from persistent, ongoing queries to one or more search facilities or services, updates to the number or content of documents available in a shared file system, updates about organizational information, information that comes available that is related to a specified content, document or topic, Internet-related information and news services, people availability, location, proximity, scheduling queries, proximities and locations of companies and organizations.

11. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one notification source has one or more parameters associated with it representing at least one of:

a classification of a current notification generated by the notification source indicating value of information contained in the current notification; and

a time criticality of the current notification generated by the notification source indicating time-dependent decay of the value of the information contained in the current notification.

12. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one notification source has parameters associated with it representing at least one of:

a message class of a current notification generated by the notification source indicating a type of communication of the current notification;

a relevance of the current notification indicating a likelihood of the relevance of information contained in the current notification;

a novelty of the current notification indicating a likelihood of whether an entity already knows the information; and

a fidelity of the current notification indicating a loss of value to the entity of the information upon truncation of the information.

13. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one notification source comprises at least one of:

a pull-type notification source, and a push-type notification source.

14. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one notification sink comprises one or more of:

a desktop computer, a PDA, a cellular phone, a pager, and an automotive computerized device.

15. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one notification sink has parameters associated with it representing at least one of:

a device class of the notification sink indicating a type of device that the notification sink is;

a transmission reliability of the notification sink indicating a likelihood that an entity will receive information contained within a notification conveyed to the notification sink;

a cost of communication of the notification sink indicating a communication cost incurred by the entity when receiving information contained within a notification conveyed to the notification sink; and

a cost of disruption of the notification sink indicating a disruption cost incurred by the entity when receiving information contained within a notification conveyed to the notification sink.

16. The system of claim 1, wherein the notification manager performs a decision-theoretic analysis of the notifications from the at least one notification source based on the information stored by the context analyzer to determine which of the notifications from the at least one notification source should be conveyed to which of the at least one notification sink.

17. The system of claim 1, wherein the notification manager performs a heuristic analysis of the notifications from the at least one notification source based on the information stored by the context analyzer to determine which of the notifications from the at least one notification source should be conveyed to which of the at least one notification sinks.

18. A notification system, comprising:

a context analyzer to store information regarding notification parameters, and comprising;

a user notification parameters store to store default notification preferences for a user, and a user context module to determine a current context of the user, based on at least one context source;

at least one notification source to generate notifications intended for the user;

at least one notification sink to provide the notifications to the user; and

a notification manager to convey the notifications generated by the at least one notification source to the at least one notification sink based on the information stored in the context analyzer by performing a decision-theoretic analysis.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the notification parameters represent at least one of:

an importance of a current notification generated by the notification source indicating value of information contained in the current notification to the user;

a time criticality of the current notification generated by the notification source indicating time-dependent decay of the value of the information contained in the current notification to the user;

a relevance of the current notification indicating a likelihood of the relevance of information contained in the current notification to the user;

a novelty of the current notification indicating a likelihood of whether the user already knows the information; and

a fidelity of the current notification indicating a loss of value to the user of the information upon truncation of the information.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the at least one notification sink provides the notifications to the user and having parameters associated with it representing at least one of:

a device class of the notification sink indicating a type of device thereof,

a transmission reliability of the notification sink indicating a likelihood that the user will receive information contained within a notification conveyed to the notification sink;

a cost of communication of the notification sink indicating a communication cost incurred by the user when receiving information contained within a notification conveyed to the notification sink; and

a cost of disruption of the notification sink indicating a disruption cost incurred by the user when receiving information contained within a notification conveyed to the notification sink.