Patent Issued for Systems And Methods For Chatbot Applications Tracking User Stress Levels (USPTO 10,769,560)

2020 SEP 21 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventors Knas, Michal (Monson, MA); Shubrick, Payton A. (Springfield, MA); Depaolo, Damon Ryan (Barkhamsted, CT); John, Jiby (Suffield, CT), filed on May 9, 2018, was published online on September 21, 2020.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 10,769,560, is Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (Springfield, Massachusetts, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “In this disclosure, where a document, an act, and/or an item of knowledge is referred to and/or discussed, then such reference and/or discussion is not an admission that the document, the act, and/or the item of knowledge and/or any combination thereof was at a priority date, publicly available, known to a public, part of common general knowledge, and/or otherwise constitutes any prior art under any applicable statutory provisions; and/or is known to be relevant to any attempt to solve any problem with which this disclosure is concerned with. Further, nothing is disclaimed.

“Many users of personal information manager (PIM) applications, such as Microsoft Outlook, whether provided as a stand-alone desktop/laptop application, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technique, or a mobile app, are overwhelmed by a flood of information, as manifested through a multitude of emails, chats, missed call notices, calendar entries, task entries, or reminders in the PIM applications. For example, the users can become stressed when the emails or the chats are marked as urgent, especially if received within a single day, and even more so, if received less than within twelve hours of each other. Similarly, the users can become stressed when the calendar entries and the task entries overlap, as being due simultaneously or consecutively with no time breaks in-between.

“The PIM applications are generally unable to provide suitable graphical user interfaces or macros to effectively deal with the flood of information. Although some of the PIM applications employ boomeranging to address the flood of information, this approach is ineffective since such boomeranging merely delays some aspects of the flood of information for short periods of time, such as days or weeks. As such, this state of being not only negatively affects the users, whether mentally or from workflow perspective, but also makes the PIM applications slow or crash-prone, especially if the PIM applications depend on various networked-services, such as Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SharePoint.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “This disclosure at least partially addresses at least one of above inefficiencies. However, this disclosure can prove useful to other technical areas. Therefore, various claims recited below should not be construed as necessarily limited to addressing any of the above inefficiencies.

“In an embodiment, there is provided a method comprising: reading, by a chatbot application, a plurality of email messages and a plurality of calendar entries, wherein the email messages are associated with a plurality of user profiles, wherein the calendar entries are associated with the user profiles, wherein the email messages and the calendar entries are stored remote from the chatbot application; generating, by the chatbot application, a plurality of busyness factors based on the email messages and the calendar entries; writing, by the chatbot application, the busyness factors into the user profiles; reading, by the chatbot application, the busyness factors from the user profiles; aggregating, by the chatbot application, the busyness factors into a group busyness factor; caching, by the chatbot application, the group busyness factor; receiving, by the chatbot application, a query from a client during a chat, wherein the client is running remote from the chatbot application, wherein the query is regarding a particular user profile not associated with the client, wherein the user profiles include the particular user profile; reading, by the chatbot application, a particular busyness factor from the particular user profile; retrieving, by the chatbot application, the group busyness factor; comparing, by the chatbot application, the particular busyness factor against the group busyness factor; and presenting, by the chatbot application, a message to the client during the chat, wherein the message is responsive to the query, wherein the message is informative of the group busyness factor and the particular busyness factor relative to the group busyness factor.

“In an embodiment, there is provided a system comprising: a server running a chatbot application that is configured to: read a plurality of email messages and a plurality of calendar entries, wherein the email messages are associated with a plurality of user profiles, wherein the calendar entries are associated with the user profiles, wherein the email messages and the calendar entries are stored remote from the chatbot application; generate a plurality of busyness factors based on the email messages and the calendar entries; write the busyness factors into the user profiles; read the busyness factors from the user profiles; aggregate the busyness factors into a group busyness factor; cache the group busyness factor; receive a query from a client during a chat, wherein the client is running remote from the chatbot application, wherein the query is regarding a particular user profile not associated with the client, wherein the user profiles include the particular user profile; read a particular busyness factor from the particular user profile; retrieve the group busyness factor; compare the particular busyness factor against the group busyness factor; and present a message to the client during the chat, wherein the message is responsive to the query, wherein the message is informative of the group busyness factor and the particular busyness factor relative to the group busyness factor.

“This disclosure is embodied in various forms illustrated in a set of accompanying illustrative drawings. Note that variations are contemplated as being a part of this disclosure, limited only by a scope of various claims recited below.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A method comprising: reading, by a chatbot application, a plurality of email messages and a plurality of calendar entries, wherein the email messages are associated with a plurality of user profiles, wherein the calendar entries are associated with the user profiles, wherein the email messages and the calendar entries are stored remote from the chatbot application; generating, by the chatbot application, a plurality of busyness factors based on the email messages and the calendar entries; writing, by the chatbot application, the busyness factors into the user profiles; reading, by the chatbot application, the busyness factors from the user profiles; aggregating, by the chatbot application, the busyness factors into a group busyness factor; caching, by the chatbot application, the group busyness factor; receiving, by the chatbot application, a query from a client during a chat, wherein the client is running remote from the chatbot application, wherein the query is regarding a particular user profile not associated with the client, wherein the user profiles include the particular user profile; reading, by the chatbot application, a particular busyness factor from the particular user profile; retrieving, by the chatbot application, the group busyness factor; comparing, by the chatbot application, the particular busyness factor against the group busyness factor; tracking, by the chatbot application, the group busyness factor over a predetermined time period; determining, by the chatbot application, how the group busyness factor changes over the predetermined time period; generating, by the chatbot application, a baseline based on how the group busyness factor changes over the predetermined time period; and presenting, by the chatbot application, a message to the client during the chat, wherein the message is responsive to the query, wherein the message is informative of the group busyness factor, the baseline, and the particular busyness factor relative to the group busyness factor wherein the message indicates how the group busyness factor changed over the predetermined time period.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the chatbot application reads the email messages and the calendar entries periodically.

“3. The method of claim 1, wherein the chatbot server application reads the email messages and the calendar entries concurrently.

“4. The method of claim 3, wherein the chatbot application runs on a plurality of processing cores, wherein the chatbot application reads the email messages and the calendar entries via the processing cores.

“5. The method of claim 3, wherein the chatbot application includes a plurality of threads, wherein the chatbot application reads the email messages and the calendar entries via the threads.

“6. The method of claim of claim 1, wherein the chatbot application reads the email messages and the calendar entries based on receiving a plurality of read permissions, wherein the read permissions are associated with the user profiles, wherein the chatbot application generates the busyness factors responsive to the read permissions.

“7. The method of claim 1, wherein the message is informative of the group busyness factor and the particular busyness factor relative to the group busyness factor as a graphic.

“8. The method of claim 1, wherein the message is informative of the group busyness factor and the particular busyness factor relative to the group busyness factor as a text.

“9. The method of claim 1, wherein the message presents the group busyness factor and the particular busyness factor relative to the group busyness factor to be visually distinct from each other.

“10. The method of claim 1, wherein the message presents the group busyness factor and the particular busyness factor relative to the group busyness factor to be visually distinct from other information presented on the client at that time.

“11. The method of claim 1, further comprising: tracking, by the chatbot application, the baseline of the predetermined time period; determining, by the chatbot application, how the baseline changes over the predetermined time period; and outputting, by the chatbot application, an indication regarding how the baseline changed over the predetermined time period.

“12. The method of claim 1, wherein the email messages and the calendar entries are stored in a plurality of browser-based PIM applications that run local to the chatbot application.

“13. The method of claim 1, wherein the email messages and the calendar entries are stored in a plurality of PIM applications that run remote from the chatbot application.

“14. The method of claim 1, further comprising: reading, by the chatbot application, a plurality of task entries associated with the user profiles, wherein the chatbot application generates the busyness factors based on having read the task entries.

“15. The method of claim 1, wherein the email messages include a plurality of received email messages.

“16. A system comprising: a server running a chatbot application that is configured to: read a plurality of email messages and a plurality of calendar entries, wherein the email messages are associated with a plurality of user profiles, wherein the calendar entries are associated with the user profiles, wherein the email messages and the calendar entries are stored remote from the chatbot application; generate a plurality of busyness factors based on the email messages and the calendar entries; write the busyness factors into the user profiles; read the busyness factors from the user profiles; aggregate the busyness factors into a group busyness factor; cache the group busyness factor; receive a query from a client during a chat, wherein the client is running remote from the chatbot application, wherein the query is regarding a particular user profile not associated with the client, wherein the user profiles include the particular user profile; read a particular busyness factor from the particular user profile; retrieve the group busyness factor; compare the particular busyness factor against the group busyness factor; track the group busyness factor over a predetermined time period; determine how the group busyness factor changes over the predetermined time period; generate a baseline based on how the group busyness factor changes over the predetermined time period; and present a message to the client during the chat, wherein the message is responsive to the query, wherein the message is informative of the group busyness factor, the baseline, and the particular busyness factor relative to the group busyness factor, wherein the message indicates how the group busyness factor changed over the predetermined time period.”

For more information, see this patent: Knas, Michal; Shubrick, Payton A.; Depaolo, Damon Ryan; John, Jiby. Systems And Methods For Chatbot Applications Tracking User Stress Levels. U.S. Patent Number 10,769,560, filed May 9, 2018, and published online on September 21, 2020. 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=10,769,560.PN.&OS=PN/10,769,560RS=PN/10,769,560

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)