AUTOMATING WEB TASKS BASED ON WEB BROWSING HISTORIES AND USER ACTIONS

• US 20120079395A1
• Filed: 09/24/2010
• Published: 03/29/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/24/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Nichols, Jeffrey William, Bengualid, Mateo Nicolas, Cerruti, Julian Ariel, Lau, Tessa Ann, Manzato, Guillermo
• Granted Patent: US 9,594,845 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/745
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/20 Natural language analysis semantic analysis of natural language G06F40/30

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention relate to the automated processing of web tasks to provide information relevant to user tasks based on past user actions and web histories. An aspect of the invention includes a system for automating the processing of web tasks in response to user requests. The system may include a transport router that receives a user task from a transport such as a short messaging system (SMS), an email system, or a telephone system. The system may further include a web task synthesizer that generates a sequence of actions to accomplish the task, typically in the form of a script for execution by a browser automation server. The script is based on past user actions, logs, and web browsing histories. The system compiles the most relevant information from the visited web pages and returns the results to the user.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a transport router for receiving a user task from a transport;

a web task synthesizer for synthesizing a sequence of actions to accomplish the user task, wherein the sequence of actions is based on previous user web actions; and

a browser automation server for executing the synthesized sequence of actions on the web and returning to the user information that is relevant to the user task, wherein the information results from said execution.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a repository of said previous user web actions.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising an interface for the user to add input to and confirm the user task.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the interface is in a natural language and dialog based.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a result repository for storing said information.

6. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code comprising:

computer readable program code configured to synthesize a sequence of actions to accomplish a user task, wherein the sequence of actions is based on previous user web actions;

computer readable program code configured to execute the synthesized sequence of actions on the web; and

computer readable program code configured to return to the user information that is relevant to the user task, wherein the information results from said execution.

7. The computer program product of claim 6, further comprising computer readable program code configured to allow the user to add parameter input to the synthesized sequence of actions.

8. The computer program product of claim 6, further comprising computer readable program code configured to extract said information from a web page downloaded during said execution.

9. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein said information is extracted using an auto-clipping utility.

10. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the user task is specified through a transport.

11. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the transport is selected from the group consisting of an email interface, a short message system (SMS) interface, and a portable computer interface.

12. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the user task is specified as a generally short textual message.

13. A method comprising:

synthesizing a sequence of actions to accomplish a user task, wherein the sequence of actions is based on previous user web actions;

executing the synthesized sequence of actions on the web; and

returning to the user, information that is relevant to the user task, wherein the information results from said execution.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the previous user web actions are derived from a web browsing history.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising adding parameter input to the synthesized sequence of actions.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the user confirms the synthesized sequence of actions through a user interface.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein said information is extracted from a web page downloaded during said execution.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein said information is extracted based on a clipping instruction.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein said information is extracted using an auto-clipping utility.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the auto-clipping utility is based on geometric clustering and generates a web page region with a highest relevancy score relative to the user task.

21. The method of claim 13, wherein the synthesized sequence of actions is processed by a browser automation server.

22. The method of claim 13, wherein the user task is specified through a transport.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the transport is selected from the group consisting of an email interface, a short message system (SMS) interface, and a portable computer interface.

24. The method of claim 13, wherein the user task is specified in a generally short textual format.

25. The method of claim 13, wherein the user task is specified in natural language.