Patent Issued for Systems and methods for accessing a decision tree (USPTO 11392865): United Services Automobile Association

2022 AUG 10 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Medina, III, Reynaldo (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on September 28, 2020, was published online on July 19, 2022.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11392865 is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Wide-area networks, including world-wide networks, such as the Internet, have become essential tools for personal and business use. As consumers continue to gain familiarity and comfort using online tools, such as Internet browsers, email, and real-time communication tools, business can continue to expand services. For example, using the Internet to supplement traditionally human-supplied services, such as customer support and order processing, businesses can provide goods and services at lower costs and consumers can gain certain advantages, such as 24-hour accessibility or multi-lingual capabilities. As technology increases in complexity, more intelligent systems become possible.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Systems and methods for dynamic business decision making are described. In an embodiment, a system comprises a first module configured to access a business rule; a second module configured to deconstruct the business rule into a condition and an associated action; a third module configured to determine a set of questions relevant to the condition; a fourth module configured to place the set of questions into a question queue; a fifth module configured to order the question queue; and a sixth module configured to present the question queue to a user.

“In an embodiment, a system comprises a first module configured to receive a request from a user; a second module configured to determine a subject of the request; a third module configured to use the subject to obtain a set of relevant questions; a fourth module configured to determine, for each question in the set of relevant questions, whether an answer to a current question is available in a storage area; and a fifth module configured to present the current question to the user when the answer to the current question is not available in the storage area.

“In an embodiment, a system comprises a first module configured to access a decision tree, wherein the decision tree is organized using a first question as a root node and a plurality of terminal questions as leaf nodes; a second module configured to determine a current node of the decision tree, wherein the current node corresponds with a current question being presented to a user in a user-interface; a third module configured to determine an estimated number of nodes between the current node and a leaf node; and a fourth module configured to present a representation using the estimated number of nodes in the user-interface. Other embodiments are described.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer system, comprising: one or more processors; and one or more memories storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computer system to perform a process comprising: receiving, from a client computer, a request that indicates an activity initiated by a user; determining at least one subject of the request by parsing the request; retrieving a set of questions related to the at least one subject of the request; in response to retrieving the set of questions freeing at least one memory structure containing the set of questions; sending, to the client computer, a question to be presented on the client computer via a user-interface element with which the client computer is configured to receive an input response to the question, wherein the question is obtained from set of questions related to the at least one subject; causing a representation based on a tree graph to be displayed on the client computer, wherein the tree graph represents multiple questions as nodes, wherein the tree graph is organized using a first question as a root node and a plurality of terminal questions as leaf nodes, and wherein the tree graph comprises a plurality of edges where each edge represents an answer that connects an ancestor question node to a descendent question node; determining an estimated number of nodes between a node associated with the question and a leaf node of the tree graph, wherein the estimated number of nodes is based on A) a maximum number of edges between the node associated with the question and a farthest leaf node and B) a minimum number of edges between the node associated with the question and a nearest leaf node; performing, upon reception of an answer to the question, a traversal operation on the tree graph by traversing from a node associated with the question to a subsequent node of the tree graph associated with a subsequent question; updating, after the reception of the answer to the question, a counter that represents the estimated number of nodes remaining between the subsequent node and the leaf node of the tree graph; and displaying, after the counter is updated, the estimated number of nodes remaining between the subsequent node and the leaf node.

“2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the process further comprises: incrementing, after the reception of the answer to the question, a second counter that represents a number of nodes visited; and displaying, after the second counter is incremented, the number of nodes visited.

“3. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the counter is updated by decrementing the counter non-linearly in response to the answer.

“4. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the process further comprises: performing a first determination that an answer to an other question is stored; performing a second determination, in response to the first determination, that the other question is not to be displayed to obtain the answer that is stored; and displaying the answer to the other question in a summary page when a final disposition of the request is performed, wherein the answer to the other question is confirmed or modified.

“5. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the process further comprises: querying a database to determine whether an answer is available to a question; and performing a determination that the answer to the question is not available in the database, wherein the question is sent to the client computer in response to the determination that the answer to the question is not available in the database.

“6. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the question and the subsequent question are each formatted using a standardized interface language.

“7. The computer system of claim 1, wherein determining the estimated number of nodes comprises averaging A) the maximum number of edges between the node associated with the question and the farthest leaf node and B) the minimum number of edges between the node associated with the question and the nearest leaf node.

“8. A method, comprising: receiving, from a client computer, a request that indicates an activity initiated by a user; determining at least one subject of the request by parsing the request; retrieving a set of questions related to the at least one subject of the request; in response to retrieving the set of questions, freeing at least one memory structure containing the set of questions: sending, to the client computer, a question to be presented on the client computer via a user-interface element with which the client computer is configured to receive an input response to the question, wherein the question is obtained from set of questions related to the at least one subject; causing a representation based on a tree graph to be displayed on the client computer, wherein the tree graph represents multiple questions as nodes, wherein the tree graph is organized using a first question as a root node and a plurality of terminal questions as leaf nodes, and wherein the tree graph comprises a plurality of edges where each edge represents an answer that connects an ancestor question node to a descendent question node; determining an estimated number of nodes between a node associated with the question and a leaf node of the tree graph, wherein the estimated number of nodes is based on A) a maximum number of edges between the node associated with the question and a farthest leaf node and B) a minimum number of edges between the node associated with the question and a nearest leaf node; performing, upon reception of an answer to the question, a traversal operation on the tree graph by traversing from a node associated with the question to a subsequent node of the tree graph associated with a subsequent question; updating, after the reception of the answer to the question, a counter that represents the estimated number of nodes remaining between the subsequent node and the leaf node of the tree graph; and displaying, after the counter is updated, the estimated number of nodes remaining between the subsequent node and the leaf node.

“9. The method of claim 8 further comprising: incrementing, after the reception of the answer to the question, a second counter that represents a number of nodes visited; and displaying, after the second counter is incremented, the number of nodes visited.

“10. The method of claim 8, wherein the counter is updated by decrementing the counter non-linearly in response to the answer.

“11. The method of claim 8 further comprising: performing a first determination that an answer to an other question is stored; performing a second determination, in response to the first determination, that the other question is not to be displayed to obtain the answer that is stored; and displaying the answer to the other question in a summary page when a final disposition of the request is performed, wherein the answer to the other question is confirmed or modified.

“12. The method of claim 8 further comprising: querying a database to determine whether an answer is available to a question; and performing a determination that the answer to the question is not available in the database, wherein the question is sent to the client computer in response to the determination that the answer to the question is not available in the database.

“13. The method of claim 8, wherein the question and the subsequent question are each formatted using a standardized interface language.

“14. The method of claim 8, wherein determining the estimated number of nodes comprises averaging A) the maximum number of edges between the node associated with the question and the farthest leaf node and B) the minimum number of edges between the node associated with the question and the nearest leaf node.

“15. A computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to perform a process comprising: receiving, from a client computer, a request that indicates an activity initiated by a user; determining at least one subject of the request by parsing the request; retrieving a set of questions related to the at least one subject of the request; in response to retrieving the set of questions, freeing at least one memory structure containing the set of questions: sending, to the client computer, a question to be presented on the client computer via a user-interface element with which the client computer is configured to receive an input response to the question, wherein the question is obtained from set of questions related to the at least one subject; causing a representation based on a tree graph to be displayed on the client computer, wherein the tree graph represents multiple questions as nodes, wherein the tree graph is organized using a first question as a root node and a plurality of terminal questions as leaf nodes, and wherein the tree graph comprises a plurality of edges where each edge represents an answer that connects an ancestor question node to a descendent question node; determining an estimated number of nodes between a node associated with the question and a leaf node of the tree graph, wherein the estimated number of nodes is based on A) a maximum number of edges between the node associated with the question and a farthest leaf node and B) a minimum number of edges between the node associated with the question and a nearest leaf node; performing, upon reception of an answer to the question, a traversal operation on the tree graph by traversing from a node associated with the question to a subsequent node of the tree graph associated with a subsequent question; updating, after the reception of the answer to the question, a counter that represents the estimated number of nodes remaining between the subsequent node and the leaf node of the tree graph; and displaying, after the counter is updated, the estimated number of nodes remaining between the subsequent node and the leaf node.”

There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.

For additional information on this patent, see: Medina, III, Reynaldo. Systems and methods for accessing a decision tree. U.S. Patent Number 11392865, filed September 28, 2020, and published online on July 19, 2022. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11392865.PN.&OS=PN/11392865RS=PN/11392865

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