The present invention provides a user interface for input-limited mobile devices that permit operators of the mobile device to input queries to enterprise management applications in a convenient manner.
Modern businesses typically use computer networks and applications (collectively, enterprise services) to manage their day-to-day operations. Product manufacturers, among other things, use enterprise services to manage customer relations and sales, to monitor product inventory, to manage manufacturing and vendor supply chains and to arrange for product shipping. These manufacturers increasingly use feature-rich mobile computing platforms such as laptop computers, tablet computers and robust personal digital assistants to permit their employees to run queries of enterprise data from remote locations in real time. Such features are particularly useful when, for example, a manufacturer salesperson meets personally with a client at the client's location and the client requests real time confirmation that the manufacturer can fulfill a prospective product order.
As noted, laptop computers, tablet computer and personal digital assistants are feature rich. They typically include a robust set of user interface devices to permit operators to enter and manage a wide variety of user data rapidly. A typical laptop computer may have an 88-key keyboard, which permits an operator to enter freestyle text with ease. Similarly, these feature rich devices typically include large displays that permit a wide variety of complex user interfaces such as are provided in HTML pages.
Notwithstanding the advantages of such feature rich devices, they have not achieved widespread use in all countries of the world due to their relatively high cost. For example, they currently are considered cost-prohibitive in many countries of Asia and Africa. Despite these limitations, salespersons in these countries still require real time access to enterprise services and the underlying data. Salespeople in such countries typically attempt to access enterprise services using limited feature set computing devices such as mobile phones, which have display sizes typically less than 2″×2″ or less than 200 pixels by 200 pixels and have less than 15 keys for data input.
Using a mobile phone, a salesperson may generate a short message service (SMS) message which includes a query to an enterprise service defined according a character delineated string of input data. One such example is illustrated in
This means of querying an enterprise service is cumbersome because it requires an operator to memorize the fields that must be entered into the SMS query and the order in which the fields must be entered. During the ordinary course of a salesperson's job, the salesperson may run perhaps a dozen or more different types of queries to an enterprise service, each of which must be memorized to be performed effectively. This communication protocol, therefore, is vulnerable to human error.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a user interface in a feature limited mobile communication device that assists operators to generate and submit SMS queries to an enterprise service.
Embodiments of the present invention provide a user interface for a feature limited mobile device that provides a field delimited prompt for data. The user interface displays truncated field prompts that identify input data. When input data is assembled, the mobile device generates a delimited query and transmits it to an enterprise service. A query response from the enterprise service is displayed on the mobile device.
An operator of the mobile unit 110 may generate a query of the server 120 via a user interface of the present invention. When the operator commands the mobile unit 110 to send the query to the server 120, the mobile unit 110 generates a message and communicates the message to the communication network 130 via a wireless communication protocol. Various messaging formats are available. For example, the message may be an SMS message, a multimedia message service (MMS) message or an e-mail message. The communication network 130 forwards the message to the enterprise server 120 where it is parsed and executed. The enterprise server 120 may generate a query response, which is transmitted back to the mobile unit 110 via the communication network 130. The mobile unit 110 may display the response on a display.
The principles of the foregoing embodiments may be integrated with other navigation aids for user interfaces. For example, if the number of fields to a query exceeds a number that can be displayed simultaneously on a display, the user interface may permit scrolling through the fields to permit an operator to enter all necessary data. Additionally, the user interface may distribute field prompts across pages of information. In this manner, an operator may enter all appropriate data for a query even though the data cannot be accommodated on a single screen of the display.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, the user interface may dynamically expand a field prompt if an operator has difficulty determining what kind of information is being sought by the prompt.
According to an embodiment, expansion of a field prompt may be triggered by user navigation to a corresponding field followed by a period of inactivity. The user interface may provide a cursor that indicates a point of the display on which new operator input will be entered. If an operator places the cursor in an empty field and then leaves the cursor in the field for a predetermined period of time without entering data therein, the user interface may display an expanded form of a field prompt therefor to identify the information being sought. Once an operator begins to enter data in the field or if the operator navigates the cursor away from the corresponding field, the user interface may return the field prompt to its default, truncated form.
The query management process 520 is a service that facilitates collection of query data from mobile unit operators. The query management process 520 may be supported by a variety of templates 540 that are specific to each kind of query to be performed (only one such template is illustrated in
When the query management process 520 is invoked, the process 520 may present an introductory menu from which an operator selects an appropriate query. The process 520 then generates field prompts according to the definitions provided in a corresponding template 540. Once an operator indicates to the mobile unit that the query data is complete, the process 520 may pass the query data to the messaging service 530 using the same protocol as is used when an operator enters messaging data directly to the messaging service and causes it to generate an outgoing message. Thus, the present invention provides an elegant user interface to an operator without requiring any alteration to the performance of the messaging service 530.
The principles of the present invention may be extended to other applications beyond queries of enterprise services. For example, one may provide predefined user interfaces on mobile devices of IT professionals to permit them to run remote diagnostics of computer networks. Such queries would be delivered to the networks and responses returned to the mobile devices. In such an embodiment, the predefined user interfaces may be supplemented with an option to permit the IT professional to enter command line prompts at the mobile device, which would be delivered to and executed by the computer network.
Several embodiments of the present invention are specifically illustrated and described herein. For example, while the invention has been described as operating on a mobile phone, it also finds application with other feature-limited devices such as personal digital assistants (including Blackberry-style PDAs), pagers and the like. However, it will be appreciated that modifications and variations of the present invention are covered by the above teachings and within the purview of the appended claims without departing from the spirit and intended scope of the invention.