Method and apparatus for interactive reports

• US 9,244,894 B1
• Filed: 09/16/2013
• Issued: 01/26/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/16/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Arria Data2text Limited
• Original Assignee: Arria Data2text Limited
• Inventors: Bradshaw, William Anthony, Dale, Robert, Feegrade, Mario, Burnett, Neil
• Primary Examiner(s): Holmes, Michael B
• Application Number:
  US14/027,775
• Time in Patent Office: 862 Days
• Field of Search: 706/12
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/253 Grammatical analysis; Style critique
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/279 Recognition of textual entities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/206 Drawing of charts or graphs
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text

Abstract

Methods, apparatus and computer program products for interactive reports are disclosed herein. In some examples, a method for generating an output report that is an interactive report may include identifying one or more messages to be hyperlinked in an output report, wherein the one or more messages are data structures that are configured to linguistically describe at least a portion of raw input data; determining one or more interactive responses based on the one or more messages to be hyperlinked; determining one or more words in a phrase specification that are related to the one or more messages to be hyperlinked; and generating the output report, wherein the one or more words are hyperlinked in the output report such that when selected at least one of the one or more interactive responses is performed.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

identifying one or more messages to be hyperlinked in an output report, wherein the one or more messages are data structures that are configured to linguistically describe at least a portion of raw input data;

determining one or more interactive responses based on the one or more messages to be hyperlinked;

determining, using a processor, one or more words in a phrase specification that are related to the one or more messages to be hyperlinked;

generating the output report, wherein the one or more words are hyperlinked in the output report such that when selected at least one of the one or more interactive responses is performed; and

in response to a selection of a hyperlink, generating an interactive response using an interactive report generation system.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more words in the phrase specification that are related to the one or more messages to be hyperlinked are determined by:

hyperlinking the entire sentence in an instance in which a single message is to be realized into a single sentence; and

hyperlinking at least one of a noun phrase, verb phrase or sentence constituent related to a message that is to be hyperlinked based on at least one of lexicalization rules, aggregation rules or a referring expression generator.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining that a selection of a hyperlink is to result in an annotated graph;

detecting one or more patterns in a data channel derived from raw input data, the data channel related to the hyperlink;

identifying one or more patterns in another data channel also derived from the raw input data;

generating one or more phrases describing the one or more patterns in the data channel and the one or more patterns in the another data channel; and

generating a graphical output based on the hyperlink, the data channel, the another data channel and the one or more phrases, wherein the one or more phrases are interactively annotated on the graphical output of the data channel and the another data channel.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining that a selection of a hyperlink is to result in another output report in the form of a text;

determining the document plan for the another report based on a document plan for the output report and the communicative goal of the sentence containing the hyperlink; and

generating the another output report using an interactive report generation system.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

modifying the another output report based on a current context of a reader.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating the output report by performing language generation operations comprising;

arranging the one or more messages in a document plan in an order in which they are to be linguistically described in the output report;

converting at least one of the one or more messages into a text specification that represents one or more data structures that are representative of at least one syntactic constituent and syntactic feature of a sentence; and

applying a grammar to the text specification data structure to generate the output report that is displayable in a user interface.

7. A method comprising:

displaying an output report having one or more hyperlinks surrounding one or more words, wherein the one or more hyperlinks provide an indication that an interactive response is available;

receiving an indication of a selection of a hyperlink of the one or more hyperlinks;

determining, using a processor, a communicative goal for a sentence having the hyperlink and a current context of the reader;

generating an interactive response using an interactive report generation system based on the communicative goal; and

displaying the interactive response.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

determining that the selection of the hyperlink is to result in an annotated graph;

detecting one or more patterns in a data channel derived from raw input data, the data channel related to the hyperlink;

identifying one or more patterns in another data channel also derived from the raw input data;

generating one or more phrases describing the one or more patterns in the data channel and the one or more patterns in the another data channel; and

generating a graphical output based on the data channel, the another data channel and the one or more phrases, wherein the one or more phrases are interactively annotated on the graphical output of the data channel and the another data channel.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

determining that the selection of the hyperlink is to result in another output report in the form of a text;

identifying a document plan for the another report based on a document plan for the output report and the communicative goal of the sentence containing the hyperlink; and

generating the another output report using an interactive report generation system.

10. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

generating the output report by performing language generation operations comprising;

arranging the one or more messages in a document plan in an order in which they are to be linguistically described in the output report;

converting at least one of the one or more messages into a text specification that represents one or more data structures that are representative of at least one syntactic constituent and syntactic feature of a sentence; and

applying a grammar to the text specification data structure to generate the output report that is displayable in a user interface.

11. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

identifying one or more messages to be hyperlinked in an output report, wherein the one or more messages are data structures that are configured to linguistically describe at least a portion of raw input data;

determining one or more interactive responses based on the one or more messages to be hyperlinked;

determining one or more words in a phrase specification that are related to the one or more messages to be hyperlinked; and

generating the output report, wherein the one or more words are hyperlinked in the output report such that when selected at least one of the one or more interactive responses is performed.

12. The method of claim 7 wherein the one or more words in the phrase specification that are related to the one or more messages are determined by:

hyperlinking the entire sentence in an instance in which a single message is to be realized into a single sentence; and

hyperlinking at least one of a noun phrase, verb phrase or sentence constituent related to a message that is to be hyperlinked based on at least one of lexicalization rules, aggregation rules or a referring expression generator.

13. An apparatus comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program code, the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to at least;

identify one or more messages to be hyperlinked in an output report, wherein the one or more messages are data structures that are configured to linguistically describe at least a portion of raw input data;

determine one or more interactive responses based on the one or more messages to be hyperlinked;

determine one or more words in a phrase specification that are related to the one or more messages to be hyperlinked; and

generate the output report, wherein the one or more words are hyperlinked in the output report such that when selected at least one of the one or more interactive responses is performed; and

in response to a selection of a hyperlink, generate an interactive response using an interactive report generation system.

14. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the one or more words in the phrase specification that are related to the one or more messages to be hyperlinked are determined by:

hyperlinking the entire sentence in an instance in which a single message is to be realized into a single sentence; and

hyperlinking at least one of a noun phrase, verb phrase or sentence constituent related to a message that is to be hyperlinked based on at least one of lexicalization rules, aggregation rules or a referring expression generator.

15. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the at least one memory including the computer program code is further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to:

determine that a selection of a hyperlink is to result in an annotated graph;

detect one or more patterns in a data channel derived from raw input data, the data channel related to the hyperlink;

identify one or more patterns in another data channel also derived from the raw input data;

generate one or more phrases describing the one or more patterns in the data channel and the one or more patterns in the another data channel; and

generate a graphical output based on the hyperlink, the data channel, the another data channel and the one or more phrases, wherein the one or more phrases are interactively annotated on the graphical output of the data channel and the another data channel.

16. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the at least one memory including the computer program code is further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to:

determine that a selection of a hyperlink is to result in another output report in the form of a text;

determine the document plan for the another report based on a document plan for the output report and the communicative goal of the sentence containing the hyperlink; and

generate the another output report using an interactive report generation system.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the at least one memory including the computer program code is further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to:

modify the another output report based on a current context of a reader.

18. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the at least one memory including the computer program code is further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to:

generate the output report by performing language generation operations comprising;

arranging the one or more messages in a document plan in an order in which they are to be linguistically described in the output report;

converting at least one of the one or more messages into a text specification that represents one or more data structures that are representative of at least one syntactic constituent and syntactic feature of a sentence; and

applying a grammar to the text specification data structure to generate the output report that is displayable in a user interface.