FORM - 2
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970
(39 of 1970)
&
THE PATENTS RULES, 2003
PROVISIONAL
Specification
(See section 10 and rule 13)
EMERGING WEB BASED COMMUNICATION AND METHODS THEREOF
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LTD.
an Indian Company
of Bombay House, 24, Sir Homi Mody Street, Mumbai 400 001,
Maharashtra, India
THE FOLLOWING SPEC IFICATION DESCRIBES THE INVENTION.

Field of Invention:
The invention relates to the field of emerging web based communication and methods thereof.
Background of the invention:
With the advent of Internet, a new dimension for globalization of communication has come into picture. Most of the communications today are online, providing the user with the facility to carry out their transactions through the Internet. However, communications traditionally been through menu driven interface and determining the correct set of menus to perform an operation may turn out to be cumbersome, tedious as well as time consuming. Many of the online transactions also involve some data input from the user. With increasing number of users logging into a particular application, there maybe some amount of delay before performing the next set of operations. As a result, sometimes the session expires and the user is expected to redo the same set of operations. Sometimes due to the load (i.e. large number of users logged on), the connection with server cannot be established. Therefore, interacting with applications over the Web can, at times, be troublesome.
Although a number of attempts have been made to build natural language interfaces for applications and databases , there has not been any attempt to have an intelligent e-mail-based workflow interface to communication_for the user. Answers Anywhere by Sybase Inc, has been designed to have natural language enabled interfaces to communication transaction (wireless phone, a handheld PDA , a customized console, or a desktop computer). The method is based on agents and networks. The network structure defines
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the communication path between agents, which in turn determine the way agents get requests and provide responses. While their approach is good it does not handle workflow of the commercial application, semantic description of web resources, traversal of the ontology graph or ontology-based querying and retrieval.
Domain-specific languages (DSL) have been created to simplify the specification of a system for a particular domain. A DSL can be viewed as a programming language dedicated to a particular domain or problem, providing appropriate built-in abstractions and notations. Normally such languages are designed for a programmer and not for an end-user.
US Patent number 5197005 describes a method of database retrieval having a natural language interface. A database retrieval system having a natural language interface is provided. A database developer creates a knowledge base containing a structural description and semantic description of an application database from which data is to be retrieved. A database independent, canonical internal meaning representation of a natural language query is produced but the entire procedure is very time consuming and tedious.
US Patent Number5748974 describes a multimodal natural language interface which intercepts user's request combining natural language input from the user with information selected from current application and sends request in the proper form to an appropriate auxiliary application for processing. This method does not handle ontology-based querying and retrieval.
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Emails have become a standard mode of interaction between humans. There was a need for an e-mail based interaction between humans and browser applications. An intelligent e-mail based workflow interface to a browser application on an Internet enabled device would enable the user to communicate with the application in natural language, such as English.
Objects of the Invention:
One object of the invention is to provide an intelligent e-mail based workflow interface to .
One more object of the invention is to enable the user to carry out dialogue in our day-to-day (natural) language with the .
Yet another object of the invention is that the user need not be continuously logged on to a system, thus reducing the load on the application server.
Another object of the invention is to provide a system for email based workflow interface to browser application which is user friendly.
Still another object of the invention is to provide an interface where multiple tasks can be performed.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide an architecture which is intended for use not only by the programmer but also by the normal user.
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Summary of the invention:
According to one embodiment of this invention , there is provided an architecture which proposes intelligent e-mail based workflow interface to browser application which comprises: -ontology creation means
- E- mail reading means -E-mail parser means
- tagger means
-Means to handle queries of the domain -workflow handling means -task handling means
- Data repository means
- Validation means -e-mail formulator means -security means
-e mail sender means
Typically, the architecture includes an ontology creation means, which is adapted to describe domain terms and their relationship.
Typically, said e-mail reader means is adapted to dump the contents of the mail into a text file.
Typically, said e-mail parser is adapted to read the contents and function of mail dumped by the said e-mail reader.
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Typically, said tagger means along with the marked (raised concepts) is adapted to identify that part of the ontology which needs to be traversed .The synonym handler is used to map synonyms to domain specific terms.
Typically, said means to handle queries posted by user is adapted to answer in one of the following ways:
- Firing of queries
- Ontology traversal
- retrieving answers through Application program interface (API)
Typically, said task handling means is adapted to decide which way should be used to answer the query from said means to handle queries.
Typically, said workflow handling means is adapted to handle complete workflow of application thereby simplifying the task of filling an application form and handling the entire workflow via an e-mail.
Typically, said validation means is adapted to check if the relevant criteria are met.
Typically, said data repository means is adapted to hold the data that has been extracted from the application form but has not been inserted into another repository means (application database.)
Typically, said email formulator means is adapted to formulate the answer of the query that user has posed in natural language and to figure out the e-mail of user, the subject written and the 'cc and bcc' of the e-mail.
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Typically, said security means is a processor adapted to encrypt outbound mail from said e mail formulator, without requiring the recipient to have special software installed to decrypt the message.
Typically, said email sender means is adapted to send the e-mail to user along with naturally formulated answer.
Brief description of the drawings:
Fig 1 is a block diagram of overall architecture of one embodiment of an intelligent e-mail based workflow interface to a browser application.
Fig 2 is a block diagram of one embodiment in accordance with the present invention for the domain ontology creation.
Fig 3 is a flow chart of one embodiment in accordance with the present invention describing the logical workflow of this invention.
Detailed description of the drawings:
Referring to Fig 1, the architecture is envisaged in accordance with this invention for intelligent e-mail-based workflow interface to browser application which relies on domain ontology. The ontology is described using semantic Web technology , namely Web Ontology Language (OWL), Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Notation 3(N3). The e-mail-based workflow interface uses the ontology and data to derive facts and reason on them in order to answer the user's input. The body of the e-mail doesn't posses any structure and hence the content of the mail has to undergo natural language processing in order to extract relevant text. Such
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an interface would allow users to ask questions about the domain, post tasks to be carried out in the domain through an e-mail, but would not be strong enough in general conversation or questions not concerned with the domain. The scope of the interface would then be restricted. •
The user poses a query to the system through an e-mail. This e-mail is read and parsed in order to obtain relevant data. The query obtained after parsing of the e-mail is sent to the synonym handler, which does synonym replacement , the input is then tagged and domain ontology is used to identify concepts. Next, these concepts are then given to the task manager. The task manger decides whether to fire SPARQL, call an API function, or let the system traverse the ontology, to obtain the answer. The answer obtained is then sent back to the user by the e-mail formulator. In case the user fills an application form, the form is first validated, if it meets the validation criteria, relevant information is extracted and inserted into the application task log and an email regarding the log status is sent to the Task Authorizer (TA) else an e-mail is sent back to the user asking him/her to provide the required information. The Task Authorizer (TA) checks the log for the consistency, on approval the data in the log is inserted in appropriate tables of the commercial application database and an email is sent to the concerned authorities about the new work in their work list. Security is an important issue, as certain data might be sensitive or restricted for some user group. As a result, security requirements may differ from one application to another. In such a case, it becomes increasingly difficult to create a single mechanism that can satisfy all the security requirements for all the commercial applications, which leads to customizing security for each application. Processing means that manages email security is Post X [12],is
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a software that can encrypt outbound mail without requiring the recipient to have special software installed to decrypt the message.
Referring to Fig 2, is a block diagram of one embodiment in accordance with the present invention for the domain ontology creation. The ontology of the domain describes the domain terms and their relationships. The application data (i.e. the database of the application) forms a part of the domain terms and their relationships in the ontology. This helps forms the main concepts of the domain and their relationships with a structure for each of the concepts. Figure 2 shows the .overall architecture of the ontology creation process. The Seed Ontology describes the basic relations that are applicable in the domain, for example "applicant has an application number", "an applicant is a person" etc. The Application Data provides the actual data that is present in the system. The Ontology Generator takes in the Seed Ontology and Application Database and creates an instance of the Seed Ontology populated by the application data. This is called the Application Ontology. Next, the rules of the application domain are then evaluated together with the Application Ontology by a Rule Engine, such as Closed World Machine (CWM), to .create the Domain Ontology. Domain Ontology is used by the NL system to answer questions on / about the tasks of the domain. Here, domain-specific rules are defined on the ontology in W3C's N3 format to state possible derivable facts about data.
Referring to Fig 3 , it is a flow chart of one embodiment in accordance with the present invention describing the logical workflow of this invention. Notations from 31 to 43 are used to explain this flow chart.
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31-user's query as e-mail sent to the system
32- The email reader dumps the mail into text file and the e-mail parser reads the contents and functions respectively.
33- Synonym handler maps various synonyms to domain specific terms and user's input is then tagged.
34-Task manager decides the way to answer a query posed in any of the three ways:
a) firing of SPARQL-a query language for RDF (resource description
framework)
b) retrieving answers through API (application program interface)
c) Ontology traversal
35- Workflow handler handles the complete workflow of transactions 36-Once the user fills the application and e-mails back to system, contents of application is received by workflow manager& it undergoes validations wherein it looks for 2-levels of checking :a) checks for data type mismatch
b) checks for sufficient and mandatory information
37-If all criteria are met , relevant data is extracted and inserted into
application task log but not inserted into the application database.
38-If the validation criteria are not met , e-mail sent to the user to provide
the missing information.
39-An e-mail sent is sent to the TA (Task Authorizer) to confirm
consistency of data required.
40- If data is consistent with the application database , relevant insertions are made in all related tables of application database.
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41- Post insertion, a new RDF is created for newly inserted data and an e-mail sent to all the authorities, to whose work list the new task has been assigned.
42- Email formulator formulates the answer to the query which the user has posed in natural language
43-Finally e- mail is sent to the user.
While considerable emphasis has been placed herein on the particular features of an intelligent e-mail based workflow interface to online communication application; the improvisation with regards to it, it will be appreciated that various modifications can be made, and that many changes can be made in the preferred embodiment without departing from the principles of the invention. These and other modifications in the nature of the invention or the preferred embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the disclosure herein, whereby it is to be distinctly understood that the foregoing descriptive matter is to be interpreted merely as illustrative of the invention and not as a limitation.

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