Patent Application
20100257470
People often employ the use of software applications to assist them with their various tasks. Many applications have been developed to help users organize their day-to-day activities and personal projects. Beyond simple to-do lists, these applications typically use the workflow model. A workflow is a model depicting the real work performed by an individual or group of individuals. Workflows have been developed for many project scales, from heavy corporate projects to lightweight individual tasks. Workflows may include the organization of resources, assigned workloads, and information flows.
Many personal project software applications available in the market are designed for a specific project type. For example, there are project management applications for helping a user with the project of preparing a tax return, planning travel, or managing finances. These types of applications must follow a strict task flow which is pre-programmed by the developer. There may be conditional pre-programmed branches throughout the task flow based on questions posed to the user and the responses received. These types of project management applications are limited to the specific type of project for which they were designed.
The accompanying drawings illustrate various embodiments of the principles described herein and are a part of the specification. The illustrated embodiments are merely examples and do not limit the scope of the claims.
Throughout the drawings, identical reference numbers designate similar, but not necessarily identical, elements.
Many workflow applications which exist in the market are designed to assist corporate entities with their projects. In order to maximize efficiency, corporate projects are meticulously planned and must be executed precisely according to plan. Consequently, many project management software applications cater to large corporate projects and are not well suited for individual or personal project management.
There are a variety of software workflow applications which are designed for use on the individual or personal level. However, as noted above, these applications are typically designed for specific types of projects, such a preparing a tax return, booking a flight, etc.
These applications have a predetermined workflow which is set specifically by the developer. The developer for these types of software applications must conform to a strict set of rules and methods for getting the user from the start of the project to the end of the project. In the example of a tax filing application, tax laws and other constraints must be considered when designing the specific project workflow.
Also, such personal project management applications are conventionally only able to help users manage a specific type of project and are not adaptable. For example, an application for helping a user with the project of planning a vacation is only able to help a user plan a vacation. The application cannot easily be changed to serve other personal projects in which the user may wish to engage.
The present specification relates to a workflow application for personal project management which is capable of dynamically managing any type of personal project. The user is able to design a specific project based on predesigned templates, other user's projects, multi-modal information collected from the Internet, or a variety of other sources. During run-time, as the user progresses through the tasks of the project, the project management application may make recommendations for additional steps in the project. The application may also place advertisements throughout the project that are relevant to what the user is trying to accomplish. These targeted suggestions and advertisements can take into account where the user has been, the present status of the user regarding the project, and what the user's end goal is. The project management application may take advantage of workflow software engines which are available such as Microsoft's® Windows® Workflow Foundation (WWF), or the developer may choose to design their own workflow engine. In this specification, a project management application utilizing reconfigurable workflows is discussed.
In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present systems and methods. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that the present apparatus, systems and methods may be practiced without these specific details. Reference in the specification to “an embodiment,” “an example” or similar language means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment or example is included in at least that one embodiment, but not necessarily in other embodiments. The various instances of the phrase “in one embodiment” or similar phrases in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.
According to various illustrative embodiments, the personal project management applications described herein, which make use of configurable workflows, may be referred to as LiteFlows. Throughout this specification, any reference made to the LiteFlows system, LiteFlows service, LiteFlows application, or LiteFlows program is referring to a personal project management software application embodying principles described herein. The LiteFlows application may be a web service or a “Cloud Service.” These terms refer to a deployment and usage model where the end user accesses LiteFlows at a remote server through a web-portal and does not have to install any applications locally. Therefore, IT issues such as operating system compatibility, backup, scalability, security, power management and other complexities are hidden from the end users. The LiteFlows application may be stored on any physical medium for storing computer or processor-readable instructions including, but not limited to, a hard drive, Flash drive or other forms of memory. The LiteFlow application may be executed on a personal computer, server, network or other computing device or system.
In other embodiments, the user could install a program on their machine that will run the LiteFlows application. The installed software application may still, in some embodiments, use the Internet to access various online repositories used to support and run the program.
When a user first starts the application, they may either continue a project which has been created previously, or they may start a new project. The user could search (106) for or navigate to topic-specific project templates (112) or projects created by other users (114). Project templates (112) may be created by the developer of the LiteFlows application or by third party entities. The user may then modify the project to suit his or her personalized needs. Those skilled in the relevant art will be able to provide the necessary tools within the software application to create an efficient project workflow.
In the illustrated example, the program utilizes a workflow engine (108). A software engine is a core part of a program that processes the basic functionality of the program. In an embodiment utilizing a workflow engine, the tasks which a user creates are encoded into parameters which are sent to the workflow engine as function arguments, where the function can be a workflow “code activity,” according to one embodiment. The workflow engine then processes the information sent from the user application and returns a working project workflow using a declarative language such as Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) or Extensible Application Markup language (XAML).
An ad server (116), such as Google® Adwords®, Turn.com, Doubleclick.net or many other similar ad servers, may be used to place advertisements into the workflows which may be related or targeted to the project on which the user is working. A variety of methods and algorithms may be used to place advertisements into the task flow of the project workflow. The placement of such advertisements may be determined by fees or bidding on the part of the advertisers or any method as employed by those skilled in the art of such electronic advertising. A limit on the amount of advertisements placed into the workflows may be put into place to keep users from getting frustrated with too many advertisements and discontinue use of the software application. In one embodiment, constraint programming may be used to determine how to place suggestions and advertisements throughout the project workflow.
A solver (110) may be used to take the workflow created by a user and indicate placement for additional content within the project workflow. This additional content may include, but is not limited to, suggestions and advertisements. The solver (110) may use a set of policies and constraints (118) as determined by the developer. During operation, the solver (110) will update the encoded workflow with positions where additional content should be placed and return it to the workflow engine. The user may then proceed with the project. If at any time during the project, the user makes changes that will affect the workflow, the solver (110) may then update the workflow with positions for additional content depending on the context (e.g. current task, access location, time, day, season, weather, available products and campaigns, etc.) and return it to the workflow engine using the various policies and constraints (118) which may be in place.
In the figure, the boxes (106,108,110) inside of the first dotted box (120) represent various processing components of the LiteFlows service. The boxes (112,114,116,118) inside of the second dotted box (122) represent various repositories or data storage units accessible through LiteFlows program. As indicated, these components may reside on the local machine or may be available over a network.
The user may also search for templates (204) which relate to a particular type of project, such as a home improvement project. These templates can be created by the developer or other third party entities. The user may then add any additional static content (206) to the template to customize the project to their individual needs.
The user may also have the option to search for existing workflows for projects that other users have already created, shared, and/or published (210). Again, the user may have the option to add static content (206) or multi-modal content such as additional tasks. The user may also be able to take away tasks or content, either static or multi-modal, which are not relevant to their specific project.
The user may also collect multi-modal information from the Internet such as pictures, videos, or text which may be relevant to their project. Collection of multi-modal information can be done by select-copy-paste or select-drag-drop operations and maintaining the links to the original content or downloading the multi-modal content to the personal workflows (114) project space. The templates (204), static content (206), multi-modal content (208), and other user's projects (210) can all be used to make a finished project workflow (212).
The LiteFlows application will take all the information collected from the user and form a completed project workflow that is ready to be executed.
The LiteFlows application will then compile the information into a workflow (314) format familiar to a workflow engine (108,
As noted above, with most workflow applications, once the workflow has been executed, it does not change. There may be branches and conditions which allow the workflow to take variable paths, but the workflow is set as it was created by the developer. The LiteFlows application is designed to allow the workflow to change dynamically during run-time. If the user or the LiteFlows system wish to add additional tasks, they may do so.
In one embodiment, certain suggestions and/or recommendations which are relevant to the project may be placed throughout the workflow. Suggestions may either be active or inactive. Throughout this specification, active suggestions will refer to suggestions which will modify the tasks of the workflow when accepted by the user. Inactive suggestions will refer to suggestions which will not modify the tasks of the workflow. An inactive suggestion (412) could be a simple reminder to the user regarding their current task. Active suggestions (414) may also be placed along with specific tasks in the task sequence. In the figure, an active suggestion is assigned to task 4 (408). The user may wish to ignore this suggestion and move on to task 5 (410). Alternatively, the user could accept the suggestion. When an active suggestion is consumed, it may change the task sequence of the workflow by adding any number of additional tasks.
As indicated, an inactive suggestion generally does not modify the sequence of tasks in the workflow. An example of an inactive suggestion in the case of a home improvement project that includes painting might be something like: “Remember to stir the paint.” These inactive suggestions may assist with the performance of an existing task without modifying the task sequence or structure and can be anything that will help the user with the project. The source for such suggestions can be other users' projects, developer suggestions, or any other source able to be developed by those skilled in the relevant art.
An example of an active suggestion in the case of the same project would be to say something like: “Do you wish to sand and treat the wood before painting?” If the user accepts the suggestion, the LiteFlows application, including the constraint programming solver, will update the workflow and one or more additional tasks as well as potential advertisements will be added to the workflow without violating the constraints. For example, the workflow may be modified to include a sanding task followed by a wood staining task. After the user has completed the additional tasks, he or she may then proceed to the painting tasks.
In some embodiments, suggestions will depend on real time factors. For example, the LiteFlows application could have access to the weather data for the location of the user. If a user's current task involves outdoor work and the weather is poor, a suggestion may say something like: “You may want to wait for better weather.” Real-time suggestions are not limited to weather tracking. Any environmental or external factor which could affect the user's project or task in any way may be reported to the user through suggestions throughout the workflow. Those skilled in the relevant art are able to take advantage of various resources available to report relevant external conditions to a user.
Another type of active suggestion could be for the user to outsource one or more tasks.
If, for example, the user is doing some restoring work on a car engine for a project, an outsource suggestion could say something like: “Would you like to hire John the mechanic to do these steps for you?” In one embodiment, John the mechanic may place his advertisement in relevant workflow slots through a bidding process for relevant keywords such as “car restoration.” If the user chooses to outsource a few tasks to a mechanic, the workflow would be altered as shown in
Any method for placing advertisements may be used. Some advertisements are charge per impression; that is, the advertiser pays to have the user view the ad whether they click on it or not. Other advertisements are charge per click; that is, the advertiser pays only if the user clicks on the advertisement. Yet, other advertisements are charge per action; that is, the advertiser pays only if the user accepts the offer and a trackable action is present, the action denoting successful completion of business has occurred. Generally, a type of bidding occurs where the advertisement which the user will see at a specific time is the advertisement for the advertiser is willing to pay/provide the most money. It will be readily apparent to those skilled in the relevant art how auctions are made. Techniques include but are not limited to Generalized Second Price (GSP) aka Vickrey auctions or Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) type of auctions.
An issue with using advertisements with an application is that if there are too many advertisements, a user may become frustrated and discontinue use of the application. There are statistical formulas which are developed to maximize revenue by finding the maximum amount or ratio of advertisements placed into a workflow while limiting user attrition. In one embodiment of the LiteFlows application described herein, a set of constraints (118,
Constraint programming is a style of programming where relations between variables are stated as constraints. Constraint programming specifies properties of a solution. Using constraint programming to determine appropriate advertisement placement will allow greater flexibility and efficiency. Those skilled in the relevant art are able to determine the necessary constraints and how to best implement them. For example, the constraints could include total number of advertisements, advertisement density, ordering, grouping and/or any other criteria.
It will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art how line 622 defines the set for variables i and j. Line 624 indicates that the Xij matrix takes values only from the set {0,1}, where i E A represents an ad i from a set of relevant ads A and a task j from a set of tasks T in the project. Line 626 shows a constraint which places a limit (K) on the total number of advertisements (i.e., 1's) which can be placed in a project. Line 628 shows a constraint which places a limit (C) on the total number of advertisements which can be assigned to a single task. As mentioned above, the exact limits (C and K) can be defined to limit user attrition.
The project parameters are sent to a solver (708). In some embodiments, the solver (708) takes the parameters (704) and arranges them into a matrix format. In other embodiments, the LiteFlows application itself may do the matrix arrangement. The solver can then use a set of policies which represent the objective functions (e.g. maximizing revenue) and constraints (710) to solve the matrix. By solving the matrix, it is meant that the parameters are rearranged so as to fit the criteria (policies and constraints) given by the developer. For example, as mentioned before, it is important not to have too many advertisements in order to limit user attrition. The constraints can be set to satisfy the users' tolerance for advertisements. The solver makes selections from a large pool of relevant paying advertisements so that the goal of maximizing revenue under the given set of constraints is satisfied.
After the solver (708) has reconfigured the matrix, it then sends the updated parameters (712) back to the workflow engine where they may be presented as an updated executable workflow to the user through the interface (702). When a user makes a change to the workflow as they are proceeding through their project, the workflow engine (706) can send the workflow to the solver again to update the workflow. Most personal projects will not be completed in one session. Therefore, the workflow engine (706) will also send the workflow to the solver for update after each login or when conditions significantly change. Updates made may include adding additional content or accepting a suggestion, recommendation, or advertisement. Those skilled in the relevant art will be able to develop the necessary algorithms and constraint programming methods to enable the solver to properly reconfigure the workflows to match the desired criteria.
In some embodiments, a project could be represented by parameters. These project parameters could include identification (ID), name, completion status, project begin and end times, and a list of all the tasks involved. Each task involved with the project could initially inherit the properties of the project it belongs to can extend or modify these default parameters. In addition, tasks can have their own unique parameters. These concepts will be apparent to one skilled in the art of object-oriented design, specifically inheritance and polymorphism. An example of a set of task parameters is shown at the bottom of the figure (720). A set of task parameters could include an ID number (722) to identify the task. In one embodiment, the ID number could be a globally unique identifier (GUID) to uniquely identify tasks across projects and track relations among user projects or track usage of templates. The GUID can be modified when a task is modified. Other parameters may include but are not limited to the name of the task (724), the status of the task (726) meaning whether it has been completed or not, and finally the start and end times of the task (726). ViewData (728) could represent multi-modal content within the task. Operation (730) could be an operation which the task could perform electronically such as fetch content from the Internet or retrieve email, or it can be a description of one or more manual tasks. OperData (732) could be a set of data relevant to the task. An example could be a web address for fetching web content (a URL or URI). The parameters discussed above are simply an example of how task parameters may be implemented. Any method developed by those skilled in the relevant art to represent task and project parameters may be used.
In the illustrated embodiment, the LiteFlows title (802) or any other title given to the workflow application described in this specification is displayed. Below that would be a toolbar (804) containing a variety of tools which the developer deems necessary or useful for this application.
On the left side of the interface and below the toolbar is a window containing a table of current projects (806). This table includes the name of each project (810) and its status (812). Some illustrative projects which are shown in the figure are build the deck, repair the engine, plan vacation, and remodel bedroom. The status (812) is shown to the right of each project name (810). Different statuses could include but are not limited to completed, in progress, or ready (indicating the project has been created but has not yet been started). Project completion status and completion durations are measured and thus provide the basis for active or inactive suggestions.
On the right side of the interface, a button (808) is placed allowing the user to search for additional projects. As mentioned above, the user could search for previously created project templates or projects created by other users. The user could also create a project from scratch by pressing the “Create New Project” (816) button. A “User Profile” button (818) invokes options for the user to enter demographic information and ad opt-in/opt-out decisions which are used for targeted ad placement decisions.
Below these buttons is a summary window which gives an overview of the project selected from the current project window (806). This overview could include but is not limited to such information as project creation date, planned completion time, a summary or description of the project, and an overview of the tasks associated with the project and a summary or description of the project.
In the illustrated embodiment, the interface would display the project title (902) at the top. The current task title (904) could be displayed directly beneath the project title (902). On the top right, a broader view of the current task (906) could be displayed. This could be a sliding window of tasks including a few tasks previous to the current task (908) and a few tasks which will follow the current task (910).
In the illustrated example, a toolbar (912) is provided below the current task title (904). The toolbar may contain a variety of tools and menus which the developer feels will be necessary or useful to the application.
Below the toolbar (912), the main window (914) displays the current task. In the illustrated example, this includes a description of the task (916), pictures or videos (918) relevant to the task, and URL's (920) relevant to the task. There could also be a button (922) that the user may click on when they have completed the task, accepted an offer, or just skipped it. The multi-modal information displayed with the task may have come from static content created by the user, or additional content as created by the LiteFlows application.
To the left of the main window (914) could be a button (924) allowing the user to view the previous task. To the right of the main window (914) could be a button (926) allowing the user to view the next task. At the bottom left could be a banner (928) that displays advertisements which may be relevant to the current task or to the project in general. These advertisements would be out-of-flow advertisements (610,
In the bottom right is a box that may display suggestions or recommendations relating to the current task or the project in general. Suggestions or recommendations may also be placed in the main window (914). These may either be the inactive (412,
The method may further include installing and configuring a workflow engine (1002) to execute the workflow model that is presented to the user through the user interface. This workflow engine may also dynamically modify the workflow model based on user acceptance of any of the suggestions or advertisements.
The method may further include processing the workflow model (1007). This may include presenting the workflow model in any of a number of different ways using a workflow engine and user interface.
The method may also include further modifying the workflow model (1008) in response to user acceptance of any of the suggestions or advertisements added to the workflow model. This modification may including adding, deleting or reordering tasks of the workflow model.
In summary, the LiteFlows application allows users to easily modify and customize their projects both in the design phase and the run-time phase. A user is able to create a project of any type as opposed to a specific type of project. The user is able to design and customize a project to fit specific needs. The end users of the system do not needs to install or tune operating systems, web servers, databases or configure any specific programs when the LiteFlows application is provided as a service. They may use templates provided by the application developer or other third parties. They may also collect multi-modal content from the Internet or any other suitable source to synthesize a rich description of their personal project task by task. The LiteFlows program is able to give the user relevant suggestions based on past, present, and/or future tasks or projects and other users' past projects. Advertisements within the workflow also target the user's needs based on past, present and/or future tasks. The workflow model is able to be modified during run-time based on suggestions or advertisements the user chooses to accept. The LiteFlows program uses a set of policies and constraints and a constraint programming solver to modify the personal project workflow model by adding recommendations, specifically suggestions and/or advertisements.
An application embodying the principles described in this specification is not limited to the types of projects and specific projects mentioned. The examples mentioned in the description are for illustrative purposes only. Further, the invention is not limited to the ways of which suggestions, recommendations, and advertisements modify the workflow as mentioned specifically in this specification.
The preceding description has been presented only to illustrate and describe embodiments and examples of the principles described. This description is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit these principles to any precise form disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teaching.
