Sending notification of event

• US 9,577,868 B2
• Filed: 09/19/2013
• Issued: 02/21/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2010
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Amano, Takehiko, Horiuchi, Yoshio, Kumagai, Ken
• Primary Examiner(s): Thieu, Benjamin M
• Application Number:
  US14/031,489
• Publication Number:
  US 20140019529A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,251 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/00 Network arrangements or protocols for supporting network services or applications user-to-user messaging H04L51/00; network arrangements, protocols or services for supporting real-time applications in data packet communications networks H04L65/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols

Abstract

Usability is improved by decreasing the number of notifications to be read in receiving mails including notifications of events. A notification of an event is sent. In one aspect, this comprises receiving, in response to occurrence of an event, a notification of the event; storing, when event data generated from the received notification matches a conditional expression in a profile associated with the event, the notification of the event in a queue associated with at least one of change management information corresponding to the event and a recipient of the change management information; and sending, when an earliest time out of transfer times set in respective notifications stored in the queue has come, all the notifications stored in the queue, to a client that is the recipient, as a single notification.

Claims

1. A method for sending a notification of an event in a network environment, the network environment comprising a change management server and a plurality of change management clients connected to the server using a network, the method comprising:

receiving, at the server from a first change management client in response to occurrence of an event triggered by a change to a work item, a notification corresponding to the event;

generating event data from the received notification, the generated event data comprising an attribute name of an attribute affected by the change, a value of the named attribute before the change, and a value of the named attribute after the change;

comparing the generated event data to at least one conditional expression in a stored profile;

responsive to detecting a match between at least a portion of the compared event data and the compared-to conditional expression, storing a transfer time specified in the matched conditional expression in the generated event data and storing the generated event data in a queue, and if the specified transfer time is earlier than a transfer time set for the queue or no transfer time is set for the queue, then setting the transfer time for the queue to the specified transfer time; and

delaying sending of any event data stored in the queue when the transfer time for the queue has not been reached and then sending as a single notification, when the transfer time for the queue has been reached, all of the event data stored in the queue to a second change management client that is a recipient of the change management information.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the storing further comprises storing an importance value specified in the matched conditional expression in the generated event data.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the single notification comprises:

an attribute for displaying an event description of the event data when a low importance value is stored in the event data, the attribute indicating that the event description of the event data for which the low importance value is stored is to be displayed at a small scale relative to display of the event description of other event data for which a high importance value is stored; and

at least one of;

the event description of the event data, when the high importance value is stored in the event data;

a link indicating a place where the event data is stored, when the low importance value is stored in the event data;

a summary of the event data as the event description, when the low importance value is stored in the event data;

or

the event description of the event data, when the low importance value is stored in the event.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein when a high importance value is stored in the event data, the single notification includes an event description of the event data and an attribute for highlighting the event description of the event data when the event data is displayed for the recipient.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the single notification includes a description in which respective event descriptions of a plurality of pieces of event data are summarized.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the queue is associated with the change management information corresponding to the event and also with the recipient.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein:

the storing further comprises storing the event data in a plurality of queues; and

the sending operates for sending the event data in each of the plurality of queues when the transfer time for the respective queue has come.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the sending further comprises sending the single notification to a plurality of change management clients that are recipients of the change management information.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein the storing further comprises preparing, when no queue for the change management information corresponding to the event exists, a queue for the change management information corresponding to the event in a memory.

10. The method according to claim 1, wherein the profile comprises a user profile of the recipient, a project profile, or a combination of the user profile and the project profile.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein the profile is a user profile of the recipient, and the user profile comprises:

at least one conditional expression associated with an electronic calendar of a user associated with the user profile; and

a transfer time for each of the at least one conditional expression.

12. The method according to claim 1, wherein the profile is a project profile, and the project profile comprises:

at least one conditional expression associated with a project; and

a transfer time for each of the at least one conditional expression.

13. The method according to claim 12, wherein the project profile further includes an importance attribute associated with each of the at least one conditional expression.

14. A change management server that sends a notification of an event in a network environment, the network environment comprising the change management server and a plurality of change management clients connected to the server using a communications network, the server comprising:

a computer comprising a processor; and

instructions which are executable, using the processor, to perform functions comprising;

receiving, at the server from a first change management client in response to occurrence of an event triggered by a change to a work item, a notification corresponding to the event;

generating event data from the received notification, the generated event data comprising an attribute name of an attribute affected by the change, a value of the named attribute before the change, and a value of the named attribute after the change;

comparing the generated event data to at least one conditional expression in a stored profile;

responsive to detecting a match between at least a portion of the compared event data and the compared-to conditional expression, storing a transfer time specified in the matched conditional expression in the generated event data and storing the generated event data in a queue, and if the specified transfer time is earlier than a transfer time set for the queue or no transfer time is set for the queue, then setting the transfer time for the queue to the specified transfer time; and

delaying sending of any event data stored in the queue when a transfer time for the queue has not been reached and then sending as a single notification, when the transfer time for the queue has been reached, all of the event data stored in the queue to a second change management client that is a recipient of the change management information.

15. A computer program product for causing a computer to send a notification of an event in a network environment, the network environment comprising a change management server and a plurality of change management clients connected to the server using a communications network, the computer program product embodied on non-transitory computer-readable storage and comprising computer-readable program code for performing:

receiving, at the server from a first change management client in response to occurrence of an event triggered by a change to a work item, a notification corresponding to the event;

generating event data from the received notification, the generated event data comprising an attribute name of an attribute affected by the change, a value of the named attribute before the change, and a value of the named attribute after the change;

comparing the generated event data to at least one conditional expression in a stored profile;

responsive to detecting a match between at least a portion of the compared event data and the compared-to conditional expression, storing a transfer time specified in the matched conditional expression in the generated event data and storing the generated event data in a queue, and if the specified transfer time is earlier than a transfer time set for the queue or no transfer time is set for the queue, then setting the transfer time for the queue to the specified transfer time; and

delaying sending of any event data stored in the queue when a transfer time for the queue has not been reached and then sending as a single notification, when the transfer time for the queue has been reached, all of the event data stored in the queue to a second change management client that is a recipient of the change management information.