User Controlled Task Execution with Task Persistence for Assistant Systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2021117479-A1
Application number	US-202016742668-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jan 14, 2020
Priority date	Oct 18, 2019
Publication date	Apr 22, 2021
Grant date	—

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving a first user request to execute a first task comprising one or more sub-tasks from a client system associated with a user, receiving a second user request to suspend the first task from the client system, storing a dialog state for the first task in response to the second user request, wherein the dialog state comprises results of executed sub-tasks and a status indicating the first task is suspended, receiving a third user request to resume the first task, accessing the dialog state for the first task, and providing a prompt to resume the first task at the client system.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A method comprising, by one or more computing systems:
receiving, from a client system associated with a user, a first user request to execute a first task comprising one or more sub-tasks; receiving, from the client system, a second user request to suspend the first task; storing a dialog state for the first task in response to the second user request, wherein the dialog state comprises results of executed sub-tasks and a status indicating the first task is suspended; receiving a third user request to resume the first task; accessing the dialog state for the first task; and providing, at the client system, a prompt to resume the first task.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
executing one or more of the one or more sub-tasks of the first task.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining, by a natural-language understanding module, the second user request is associated with a meta-intent to suspend the first task.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining, based on a current dialog state and contextual information associated with the second user request, that the first task is associated with the second user request.

5 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining, by a natural-language understanding module, the third user request is associated with a meta-intent to resume the first task.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining, based on a current dialog state and contextual information associated with the third user request, that the suspended first task is associated with the third user request.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein storing the dialog state for the first task comprises:
allocating a particular portion of the dialog state to the first task, wherein the particular portion is associated with one or more of a task identifier or a task name associated with the first task.

8 . The method of claim 7 , wherein accessing the dialog state for the first task comprises:
identifying the particular portion of the dialog state based on one or more of the task identifier or the task name associated with the first task; and retrieving the particular portion of the stored dialog state, wherein the retrieved portion comprises the dialog state for the first task.

9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the first, second, or third user requests are based on one or more of a textual input, an image input, a video input, an audio input, or a gesture input.

10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the dialog state for the first task is stored in a dialog state stack, wherein the storing of the dialog state in the dialog state stack is based on a priority associated with the first task.

11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein storing the dialog state for the first task is based on one or more task policies.

12 . The method of claim 1 , wherein accessing the dialog state for the first task is based on one or more task policies.

13 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining, based on one or more of contextual information associated with the user or a policy associated with the first task, that the user needs to be reminded of the suspended task; and providing a notification reminding the user of the suspended first task.

14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the prompt comprises a summary of the first task, wherein the summary is generated based on the accessed dialog state.

15 . The method of claim 14 , wherein the summary is generated by a natural-language generation (NLG) module based on one or more of a language-template or a language model.

16 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, from the client system, a fourth user request to execute a second task; executing the second task; and resuming the first task based on execution results of the second task.

17 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
generating a task-function based on the suspension and resuming of the first task, wherein the task-function comprises one or more default intents and one or more slot-values for one or more slots associated with the first task, respectively, and wherein the task-function is associated with a task alias; receiving a user call from the user, wherein the user call comprises the task alias; providing a summary of the task-function based on the default intents and the slot-values; and executing the first task based on the default intents and the slot-values upon receiving a confirmation from the user.

18 . One or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media embodying software that is operable when executed to:
receive, from a client system associated with a user, a first user request to execute a first task comprising one or more sub-tasks; receive, from the client system, a second user request to suspend the first task; store a dialog state for the first task in response to the second user request, wherein the dialog state comprises results of executed sub-tasks and a status indicating the first task is suspended; receive a third user request to resume the first task; access the dialog state for the first task; and provide, at the client system, a prompt to resume the first task.

19 . A system comprising: one or more processors; and a non-transitory memory coupled to the processors comprising instructions executable by the processors, the processors operable when executing the instructions to:
receive, from a client system associated with a user, a first user request to execute a first task comprising one or more sub-tasks; receive, from the client system, a second user request to suspend the first task; store a dialog state for the first task in response to the second user request, wherein the dialog state comprises results of executed sub-tasks and a status indicating the first task is suspended; receive a third user request to resume the first task; access the dialog state for the first task; and provide, at the client system, a prompt to resume the first task.

Assignees

• Facebook Tech Llc

Inventors

• Liu Xiaohu
• Wang Zhiguang
• Subba Rajen

Classifications

• G06Q10/40 Primary

  Business processes related to social networking or social networking services · CPC title

• G06V10/82

  using neural networks · CPC title

• G06V10/764

  using classification, e.g. of video objects · CPC title

• G06V20/41

  Higher-level, semantic clustering, classification or understanding of video scenes, e.g. detection, labelling or Markovian modelling of sport events or news items (segmenting video sequences G06V20/49) · CPC title

• G06V40/174

  Facial expression recognition · CPC title