Inline search based on intent-detection

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2025217396-A1
Application number	US-202519088399-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Mar 24, 2025
Priority date	Apr 19, 2022
Publication date	Jul 3, 2025
Grant date	—

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for automatically determining an intent of a user based on an intent model to attach a file to a document, prompting the user to confirm the intent using a predetermined character in an inline nudge, generating and displaying an inline menu with an interactive list of ranked files as a suggestion for attachment. The disclosed technology uses the intent for specifying a scope of the inline search. The intent model for attaching content maintained by third-party applications uses a combination of an embeddings model and an N-gram model with limited seed queries and determines the intent based on intent scores associated with respective third-party applications. The present disclosure ranks respective candidate content based on a degree of relevance to the intent. The user selects one or more content from the list for attaching to the document.

First claim

1 - 20 . (canceled)

21 . A computer-implemented method, comprising:
receiving text input; automatically determining, based on the text input, a likelihood of a user intent to attach an entity to a document using an intent model; causing, based on the likelihood of the user intent to attach content, display of a transient inline prompt at a location adjacent to the received text input for a predetermined time; retrieving, based on the likelihood of the user intent, a set of entities; generating, based on respective entities of the set of entities, a suggestion list of ranked entities for attachment to the document; interactively displaying, in response to interactively receiving the predetermined character, the suggestion list of ranked entities; and causing attachment of one or more entities in the suggestion list to the document.

22 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , wherein the user intent to attach an entity includes an intent to attach a file, and wherein the intent model includes an embeddings model based on the text input and a task model that associates the set of entities with the user intent for generating the suggestion list of ranked entities to attach the file to the document.

23 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , wherein the intent model includes an embeddings model and an N-gram model in parallel to determine a third-party application when content used by the third-party application excludes strongly typed entities.

24 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , wherein the intent model generates an intent score for determining a third-party application that maintains content associated with the user intent to attach the entity.

25 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , wherein the generating the suggestion list of ranked entities precedes interactively receiving a response to the prompt, and the response comprises the predetermined character.

26 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , further comprising:
causing display of the prompt substantially in proximity to a cursor for text entry without overlapping the cursor; and interactively receiving a response to the prompt.

27 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , further comprising:
determining the user intent using a prefilter, wherein the prefilter compares one or more words in the text input with a whitelist, and wherein the whitelist includes the one or more words for determining whether to process the text input to determine the user intent to attach the entity.

28 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , wherein
the retrieving the set of entities further comprises retrieving, based on a scope of an inline search according to the user intent to attach the entity, the set of entities using a graph entity model.

29 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , further comprising:
discontinuing the displaying of the prompt upon displaying the suggestion list of ranked entities for attachment.

30 . The computer-implemented method of claim 21 , wherein the entities include one of:
a file, a universal resource locator (URL), a link to the file, or data representing content.

31 . A system for automatically generating a suggestion list of ranked entities based on a user intent, the system comprising:
a processor; and a memory storing computer-executable instructions that when executed by the processor cause the system to execute operations comprising:
receiving text input;
automatically determining, based on the text input, a likelihood of a user intent to attach an entity to a document using an intent model, wherein the intent model is configured to estimate the user intent to attach the entity to the document;
causing, based on the likelihood of the user intent to attach content, display of a transient inline prompt at a location adjacent to the received text input for a predetermined time, the prompt comprising a predetermined character;
retrieving, based on the likelihood of the user intent, a set of entities;
generating, based on respective entities of the set of entities, a suggestion list of ranked entities for attachment to the document;
interactively displaying, in response to interactively receiving the predetermined character, the suggestion list of ranked entities; and
causing attachment of one or more entities in the suggestion list to the document.

32 . The system of claim 31 , wherein the entity includes a file, and
wherein the intent model includes an embeddings model based on the text input and a task model associating the file and the user intent to attach the file to the document.

33 . The system of claim 31 , wherein the intent model includes an embedding model and an N-gram model in parallel to determine a third-party application when content used by the third-party application excludes strongly typed entities.

34 . The system of claim 31 , the computer-executable instructions that when executed by the processor further cause the system to execute operations comprising:
when no user input is received within a predetermined period of time, discontinuing the causing the display of the prompt.

35 . The system of claim 31 , the computer-executable instructions that when executed by the processor further cause the system to execute operations comprising:
displaying the prompt substantially in proximity to a cursor for text entry without overlapping the cursor.

36 . The system of claim 31 , wherein the retrieving the set of entities further comprises retrieving, based on a scope of an inline search according to the user intent, a set of files using a graph entity model.

37 . A computer-implemented method, comprising:
receiving text input; automatically determining, based on the text input, an entity type and a likelihood of a user intent to attach an entity of the entity type to a document using an intent model, wherein the intent model is configured to estimate the user intent to attach the entity to the document; causing, based on the determined entity type and the likelihood of the user intent to attach content, display of a transient inline prompt at a location adjacent to the received text input for a predetermined time, the prompt comprising a predetermined character; retrieving, based on the likelihood of the user intent, a set of entities of the determined entity type; generating, based on respective entities of the set of entities, a suggestion list of ranked entities for attachment to the document; interactively displaying, in response to interactively receiving the predetermined character, the suggestion list of ranked entities; and causing attachment of one or more entities in the suggestion list to the document.

38 . The computer-implemented method of claim 37 , wherein the intent model includes an embedding model and an N-gram model in parallel to determine a third-party application when content used by the third-party application excludes strongly typed entities.

39 . The computer-implemented method of claim 37 , wherein the entity type comprises file entity type, and the entity corresponds to a file.

40 . The computer-implemented method of claim 37 , further comprising:
determining the user intent using a prefilter, wherein the prefilter compares one or more words in the text input with a whitelist, and wherein the whitelist includes the one or more words for determining whether to process the text input to determine the user intent to attach the entity.

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Constantin Thomas
• Epstein Matthew Sledge
• Zogg Tszyan C
• Kaya Lutfi Ilke
• Jung Christopher Andrews
• Venkatesan Ragavenderan
• Wu Ming
• Yu Zhiguo

Classifications

• G06F40/106

  Display of layout of documents; Previewing · CPC title

• G06F16/3335

  Syntactic pre-processing, e.g. stopword elimination, stemming · CPC title

• G06F16/3328

  using graphical result space presentation or visualisation · CPC title

• G06F40/274

  Converting codes to words; Guess-ahead of partial word inputs · CPC title

• G06F16/3334 Primary

  Selection or weighting of terms from queries, including natural language queries · CPC title