Patent Issued for Systems and methods for customizing sub-applications and dashboards in a digital huddle environment (USPTO 11294549): Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company

2022 APR 27 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Casale, Robert (Bristol, CT, US), O’Malley, Abigail (Brighton, MA, US), Teller, Kedzie (Brookline, MA, US), filed on April 25, 2019, was published online on April 5, 2022.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11294549 is Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (Springfield, Massachusetts, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Conventionally, team members working on one or more projects within a company may get together in a huddle or micro-meeting on a regular basis to share information, discuss topics, evaluate performance, identify issues and/or solve problems collaboratively. Since the introduction of the huddle, whiteboards have acted as the traditional tool for storing all information collected during the active huddle session. However, it may not be possible for all participants in a meeting to be in the same physical location at the same time, which may create a need for modifying the current huddle methodology.

“Alternatives to overcome the challenge of gathering team members at different locations for a huddle may include the use of one or more collaboration tools such as conference phone calls, video conferences, Internet relay chat (IRC), and instant messaging, among others. Nevertheless, the whiteboard is still the most commonly used tool in huddle boards, because the aforementioned collaboration tools are generic ways to connect people and may not offer a consistent way to be fully engaged in huddles. As a result, all team members must be physically located in the same room in order to be fully engaged in the huddle session.

“Other alternatives to overcome the above drawbacks are systems configurations that enable remote huddle collaboration between team members of a given project content, which may take many forms including contact information, calendar items, mail, audio, photos, documents, and tasks or actions. A huddle user interface may include a predefined region for applications that can function as a home screen for a user, providing relevant content and quick access to collaboration tools. Applications’ regions provide users with a predefined view or dashboard to monitor the current state of a subset of content obtainable through a computing device. Individual applications provide users with access to applications, application content, remote content and/or independent functionality. Typically, applications regions are represented in a small or thumbnail view that provides some minimal amount of information. One or more applications regions can provide a user with the data and tasks most likely to be relevant to the particular user. Nevertheless, it is likely that a library of applications may not meet the requirements of every huddle board.

“Conventional approaches to meetings amongst remote users fail address all of the deficiencies of the conventional collaboration tools. A web meeting may allow a user to share a computer desktop with another user in a remote location. But the user must select which application should be presented on the computer desktop, so there is no ability to present a page that has information from multiple sub-applications that are dynamically updated. Further, the user cannot include annotations overlaid on the page that are simultaneously presented to the remote user and also stored with that particular page such that the particular page can be retrieved at a later date along with those annotations.

“Moreover, conventional extranets are capable of sharing information from a common source, but these extranets do not offer real-time collaboration through real-time updates and simultaneous displays to other users. Further, these conventional extranets do not utilize sub-applications that dynamically display data associated with users simultaneously accessing the extranet. Conventional computer solutions do not offer the desired collaboration, real-time updating, dynamic presentation of data, and linking of additional content to the displayed data.

“Therefore, there is still a need for a huddle user interface that allows users to create their own applications and optimize the presentation of content within a digital huddle environment.”

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 customizing sub-applications and dashboards in a digital huddle environment are disclosed. The disclosed system may be employed for customizing sub-applications according to predefined options including text, images and numbers; as well as customizing dashboards according to user requirements for showing goals progress, next meetings notifications, schedule, meetings alerts, and the like. Method for customizing sub-applications and dashboards in a digital huddle environment may allow customization of the sub-application regions according to the requirements of a particular team working in a digital huddle.

“In some embodiments, a computer-implemented method comprises identifying, by a computer, a one or more huddle board records associated with a user; providing, by a computer, a graphical user interface webpage displaying at a user device the list of one or more huddle board records associated the user; upon receiving from the user device a selection of a huddle board record through the graphical user interface, providing, by the computer, a huddle board page to the user device, the huddle board page comprising a graphical user interface configured to display one or more sub-applications containing content that is associated with a particular sub-application; receiving, by the computer, from the user device, a selection of a new sub-application for inclusion to the huddle board page, the new sub-application stored in a sub-application database comprising non-transitory machine-readable storage media configured to store one or more sub-applications; upon the computer determining the user has access rights to add the new sub-application to the huddle board page, based upon access rights in the huddle board record: fetching, by the computer, the new sub-application from the sub-application database, wherein the new sub-application contains content configured to be displayed according to a set of content rules associated with the new sub-application; generating, by the computer, in the huddle board record a set of access rights for one or more users associated with the new sub-application, based upon one or more rights selections received from the user device; updating, by the computer, the graphical user interface of the huddle board page based on the new sub-application and the set of content rules associated with the new sub-application; receiving, by the computer, one or more inputs from a second computing device through the graphical user interface configured to display the huddle board page; and updating, by the computer, the huddle board page according to the one or more inputs, wherein the graphical user interface is configured to display real-time updates to the one or more sub-applications and the new sub-application, based on inputs received from one or more user computing devices.

“Numerous other aspects, features and benefits of the present disclosure may be made apparent from the following detailed description taken together with the drawing figures.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer-implemented method comprising: generating, by a computer, a huddle session for an interaction between a plurality of users, wherein each user of the plurality of users is associated with one or more huddle board records, and wherein each of the one or more huddle board records corresponds to one or more sub-applications stored in a sub-application library accessible during the huddle session from a huddle board summary; receiving, by the computer, a selection of the one or more sub-applications stored in the sub- application library for display from at each respective user device of each of the plurality of users interacting with the huddle board summary, at least one of the selected one or more sub-applications displays data related to the huddle session and metrics related to a project; transmitting, by the computer, a huddle board page corresponding to the huddle session at the user device of each of the plurality of users, wherein the huddle board page displays the one or more selected sub-applications, wherein at least one of the selected one or more sub-applications is operated via the huddle board page and displays huddle session data associated with the respective sub-application on the huddle board page and the metrics related to the project; receiving, by the computer, from a first user device of a first user of the plurality of users, a selection of a new sub-application for inclusion to the huddle board page during the huddle session; determining, by the computer, whether the first user has access rights to add the new sub-application to the huddle board page based upon a verification of whether the first user generated the huddle session or accessed the huddle session based upon credentials associated with the first user stored in a huddle board record; authenticating, by the computer, the first user as having a permission to edit the huddle board page based upon the verification of the credentials associated with the first user; responsive to determining that the new sub-application added to the huddle board is customizable, editing, by the computer, based on an editing request received from the first user device, the new sub-application to change an attribute of the new sub-application; and updating, by the computer, the huddle board page with the new sub-application to generate an updated huddle board page during the huddle session, wherein a graphical user interface of each user device of the plurality of users displays the updated huddle board page including the one or more sub-applications and the new sub-application with the change of the attribute provided by the first user device.

“2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the new sub-application is stored in a sub-application database comprising non-transitory machine-readable storage media configured to store one or more new sub-applications.

“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the computer facilitates editing of the one or more sub-applications upon the computer determining that the first user generated the huddle session.

“4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the computer facilitates editing of the one or more sub-applications upon the computer determining that the first user is authorized based upon access rights in the huddle board record.

“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the first user authorizes one or more other users of the plurality of users in the huddle session for editing the one or more sub-applications in the huddle board page.

“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the first user edits a title, content, size, and a format of the one or more sub-applications displayed on the huddle board page.

“7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising generating, by the computer, a set of access rights for one or more new users associated with the new sub-application, based upon one or more rights selections received from the first user device.

“8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising storing, by the computer, the set of access rights for the one or more new users associated with the new sub-application in the huddle board record.

“9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, by the computer, one or more inputs from a second user device; and updating, by the computer, the huddle board page according to the one or more inputs to display real-time updates to the one or more sub-applications and the new sub-application, based on the one or more inputs received from the second user device.

“10. A system comprising: a computer configured to: generate a huddle session for an interaction between a plurality of users, wherein each user of the plurality of users is associated with one or more huddle board records, and wherein each of the one or more huddle board records corresponds to one or more sub-applications stored in a sub-application library accessed during the huddle session from a huddle board summary; receive a selection of the one or more sub-applications stored in the sub-application library for display from a user device of each of the plurality of users interacting with the huddle board summary, at least one of the selected one or more sub-applications displays data related to the huddle session and metrics related to a project; transmit a huddle board page corresponding to the huddle session at the user device of each of the plurality of users, wherein the huddle board page displays the one or more selected sub-applications, wherein the one or more sub-applications is operated via the huddle board page and displays huddle session data associated with the respective sub-application on the huddle board page and the metrics related to the project; receive from a first user device of a first user of the plurality of users, a selection of a new sub-application for inclusion to the huddle board page during the huddle session; determine whether the first user has access rights to add the new sub-application to the huddle board page based upon a verification of whether the first user generated the huddle session or accessed the huddle session based upon credentials associated with the first user stored in a huddle board record; authenticate the first user as having a permission to edit the huddle board page based upon the verification of the credentials associated with the first user; responsive to determining that the new sub-application added to the huddle board is customizable, edit, based on an editing request received from the first user device, the new sub-application to change an attribute of the new sub-application; and update the huddle board page with the new sub-application to generate an updated huddle board page during the huddle session, wherein a graphical user interface of each user device of the plurality of users displays the updated huddle board page including the one or more sub-applications and the new sub-application with the change of the attribute provided by the first user device.

“11. The system of claim 10, wherein the new sub-application is stored in a sub-application database comprising non-transitory machine-readable storage media configured to store one or more new sub-applications.

“12. The system of claim 10, wherein the computer facilitates editing of the one or more sub-applications upon the computer determining that the first user generated the huddle session.

“13. The system of claim 10, wherein the computer facilitates editing of the one or more sub-applications upon the computer determining that the first user is authorized based upon access rights in the huddle board record.

“14. The system of claim 10, wherein the first user authorizes one or more other users of the plurality of users in the huddle session for editing the one or more sub-applications in the huddle board page.

“15. The system of claim 10, wherein the first user edits a title, content, size, and a format of the one or more sub-applications displayed on the huddle board page.

“16. The system of claim 10, wherein the computer is configured to generate a set of access rights for one or more new users associated with the new sub-application, based upon one or more rights selections received from the first user device.

“17. The system of claim 16, wherein the computer is configured to store the set of access rights for the one or more new users associated with the new sub-application in the huddle board record.

“18. The system of claim 10, wherein the computer is configured to receive one or more inputs from a second user device; and update the huddle board page according to the one or more inputs to display real-time updates to the one or more sub-applications and the new sub-application, based on the one or more inputs received from the second user device.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Casale, Robert. Systems and methods for customizing sub-applications and dashboards in a digital huddle environment. U.S. Patent Number 11294549, filed April 25, 2019, and published online on April 5, 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=11294549.PN.&OS=PN/11294549RS=PN/11294549

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