System and method for orchestrating and correlating multiple software-controlled collaborative sessions through a unified conversational interface

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016269349-A1
Application number	US-201514656193-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Mar 12, 2015
Priority date	Mar 12, 2015
Publication date	Sep 15, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A method for correlating multiple collaborative sessions occurring on multiple single-modality systems includes creating a respective collaborative element containing metadata about each respective collaborative session, associating each collaborative element with a corresponding collaborative conversation, providing an overlaying control plane across the multiple single-modality systems, computing and storing conversational context of user actions within the collaborative sessions. The method further includes performing data aggregation of data within the multiple collaborative sessions, publishing one or more messages providing information regarding changes in the multiple collaborative sessions, switching modalities by entities participating in one or more of the multiple collaborative sessions, wherein the entities can follow session conversations by accessing the published one or more messages, and embedding a link in a single-modality system user interface referring to a previous session. A non-transitory computer readable medium and a system are also disclosed.

First claim

1 . A method for correlating multiple collaborative sessions occurring on multiple single-modality systems, the method comprising:
creating a respective collaborative element containing metadata about each respective collaborative session of the multiple collaborative sessions; associating each collaborative element with a corresponding conversation of the multiple collaborative sessions; providing an overlaying control plane across the multiple single-modality systems; computing conversational context of user actions within one or more of the multiple collaborative sessions; and storing computed conversational contexts by the overlaying control plane in a connected data store.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further including the step of including in the collaborative element contextual metadata regarding a relationship between two or more of the corresponding conversations.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further including performing data aggregation of data within the multiple collaborative sessions by the overlaying control plane.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further including publishing one or more messages providing information regarding changes in the multiple collaborative sessions, the changes occurring over a time period.

5 . The method of claim 4 , further including switching modalities by entities participating in one or more of the multiple collaborative sessions, wherein the entities can follow session conversations by accessing the published one or more messages.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further including embedding a link in at least one user interface of one of the multiple single-modality systems, the link referring to a previous session of the one of the multiple single-modality systems having a set of participants that is an identical set of participants as a current session.

7 . The method of claim 1 , further including exposing a set of canonical generic application programming interfaces configured to control one or more of the multiple collaborative sessions.

8 . A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform a method of correlating multiple collaborative sessions occurring on multiple single-modality systems, the method comprising:
creating a respective collaborative element containing metadata about each respective collaborative session of the multiple collaborative sessions; associating each collaborative element with a corresponding conversation of the multiple collaborative sessions; providing an overlaying control plane across the multiple single-modality systems; computing conversational context of user actions within one or more of the multiple collaborative sessions; and storing computed conversational contexts by the overlaying control plane in a connected data store.

9 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8 , including instructions to cause the processor to perform the step of including in the collaborative element contextual metadata regarding a relationship between two or more of the corresponding conversations.

10 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8 , including instructions to cause the processor to perform the step of performing data aggregation of data within the multiple collaborative sessions by the overlaying control plane.

11 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8 , including instructions to cause the processor to perform the step of publishing one or more messages providing information regarding changes in the multiple collaborative sessions, the changes occurring over a time period.

12 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 11 , including instructions to cause the processor to perform the step of switching modalities by entities participating in one or more of the multiple collaborative sessions, wherein the entities can follow session conversations by accessing the published one or more messages.

13 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8 , including instructions to cause the processor to perform the step of embedding a link in at least one user interface of one of the multiple single-modality systems, the link referring to a previous session of the one of the multiple single-modality systems having a set of participants that is an identical set of participants as a current session.

14 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8 , including instructions to cause the processor to perform the step of exposing a set of canonical generic application programming interfaces configured to control one or more of the multiple collaborative sessions.

15 . A system for correlating multiple collaborative sessions occurring on multiple single-modality systems, the system including:
a single-modality system configured as a set of independent single-modality sub-systems; a multi-modal conversational system including a multi-modal conversation manager and a set of modality-specific session managers, the session managers configured to act as an overlaying control plane across the single-modality sub-systems; the multi-modal conversation manager connected to the set of modality-specific session managers and to a conversational metadata data store; and the multi-modal conversation manager configured to expose a contextual query interface configured to access contextual metadata within the conversational metadata data store.

16 . The system of claim 15 , including the modality-specific session managers configured to control a single type of modality session, the single type of modality session provided by a corresponding one of the modality-specific session managers.

17 . The system of claim 15 , including the modality-specific session managers including a client unified session interface (USI), an agent USI, a modality-specific interface, and a vendor adaptor.

18 . The system of claim 17 , including the client USI configured to expose a canonical set of generic application programming interfaces configured to control one or more of the multiple collaborative sessions.

19 . The system of claim 17 , including the agent USI configured to provide the session managers with life-cycle events obtained from a respective single-modality sub-systems.

20 . The system of claim 17 , including the modality-specific interface configured to provide an application programming interface specific to the modality of a corresponding one of the single-modality sub-systems.

Assignees

• Gen Electric

Inventors

• Bolinger Joseph William
• Modi Piyush C
• Yu Bo
• Mikkilineni Aravind Kumar
• Nishida Yoshifumi

Classifications

• H04L51/046

  Interoperability with other network applications or services · CPC title

• H04L51/10

  Multimedia information · CPC title

• H04L67/1087

  using cross-functional networking aspects · CPC title

• H04L51/36 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L51/56 Primary

  Unified messaging, e.g. interactions between e-mail, instant messaging or converged IP messaging [CPM] · CPC title