Word processing applications permit users to create and revise documents having contents such as text and tables. Some conventional word processing applications have mechanisms that can be used to track revisions to a document each made by a particular person at a particular time, and display these revisions in the context of a document.
This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This summary is not intended to identify key factors or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.
A facility for visualizing document information is described. The facility causes to be displayed content of a document. Concurrently with the document content, the facility causes to be displayed a document information visualization area, the displayed document information visualization area including, for each of one or more categories of document interactions, a visual indication of a set of result values aggregated from individual document interaction events of the category.
The inventors have recognized that people perform a rich variety of interactions with documents whose review and analysis can yield valuable insights. The inventors have further observed, however, that conventional applications for creating and revising word processing documents and documents of other types do very little to deliver information about such interactions, particularly in ways that are useful or flexible.
Accordingly, the inventors have conceived and reduced to practice a software and/or hardware facility for visualizing interactions performed with respect to a document (“the facility”). In some embodiments, the facility tracks user interactions of a variety of types with documents, storing information for each such as its type, the identity of the user that performed it, the time at which it was performed, the identity of the document with which it was performed, the point in that document at which it was performed, substantive information about the interaction such as text that was inserted in a revision interaction, etc.
Together with contents of a document, the facility displays a visualization area containing one or more visualization elements. Each visualization element identifies a category of interactions with the document and a visual representation of the result of aggregating and/or grouping interactions with the document that are in that category. For example, for a particular document, the facility may display a visualization area containing visualization elements that (1) identify the users who have most frequently performed a view interaction with the document; (2) show the frequency with which each section of the document has been viewed; and (3) show the users who have made the most comments on the document, such as by using pie graphs. In various embodiments, the facility provides an interface for users to manipulate the visualization elements of the visualization area, such as adding them, deleting them, altering their categories, changing their visual representation forms, drilling into them to obtain more detailed information, etc. In some embodiments, the facility displays a filtering timeline in the visualization area, and enables the user to select a subrange of the range of time it portrays. In response, the facility filters the document interactions represented in each of the visualization elements to include only the interactions occurring during the subrange selected by the user. In some embodiments, the facility displays a time-series graph in connection with the timeline that shows the occurrence of interactions of a particular interaction type with respect to the document over time, such as an interaction type selected by the user.
In various embodiments, the facility allows users to visualize information about a wide variety of types of document interactions, including but not limited to: a Share interaction, in which a user shares a document or a portion of a document with one or more other users; a Give interaction, in which a user gives a document or a portion of a document to one or more other users; a Withdraw interaction, in which a user withdraws a document or a portion of a document from availability to one or more other users; a Comment interaction, in which a user creates a comment discussing a document or a portion of a document; an Annotate interaction, in which a user attaches a note to a document or a portion of a document; a View interaction, in which a user displays or reads a document or a portion of a document; a Redact interaction, in which a user makes a document or a portion of a document unavailable to one or more users; an Expose interaction, in which a user exposes a portion of a document to one or more users; a Revise or Edit interaction, in which a user changes the document or portion of a document; a Contribute interaction, in which a user offers a contribution to a document or a portion of a document to an author or manager of the document; a Compose interaction, in which a user composes a document or a portion of a document; an Arrange interaction, in which the user arranges portions of a document relative to one another; a Notify interaction, in which a user registers to be notified about certain kinds of interactions with the document or a portion of a document; a Discuss interaction, in which a user discusses a document or a portion of a document; a Pin interaction, in which a user generates a persistent copy of the current state of a document or a portion of a document; a Tag interaction, in which a user tags a document or a portion of a document for easier later reference, an Approve interaction, in which a user allows another user to take particular action with respect to a document or a portion of a document, such as revising it or incorporating it into another document; a Deny interaction, in which a user refuses to allow another user to take particular action with respect to a document or a portion of a document; a Rate interaction, in which a user specifies a rating for a document or a portion of a document; an Execute interaction, in which a user signs or otherwise executes a document or a portion of a document; a Complete interaction, in which a user designates a document or a portion of a document as complete; a Delegate interaction, in which a user delegate some action and/or privilege with respect to a document or a portion of a document to another user; a Revise interaction, in which a user changes the contents of a document or a portion of a document; or a Revert interaction, in which a user reverts a document or a portion of a document to its content at an earlier time.
In some embodiments, the facility performs various kinds of aggregations on qualifying interactions in a category to obtain an aggregation result depicted in the visualization elements, using aggregations such as count, minimum, maximum, mean, median, etc. for example, the facility may use the count aggregation function to determine the total number of Edit interactions, while the facility may use the mean aggregation function to determine the average rating ascribed among Rate interactions. In some embodiments, the facility filters document interactions with the document before aggregating them, such as by filtering them to include only interactions of a particular type or group of types; interactions performed by users in a particular group, defined in various ways; interactions performed from a particular geographic location or region; interactions performed during a particular time period of any scale; interactions performed in a particular portion of the document; etc. In some embodiments, the facility groups document interactions on the basis of factors such as of any of the factors listed above.
In some embodiments, the facility enables the user to select a portion of the document—either a predefined portion or part of the document chosen contemporaneously by the user—as a basis for the information displayed in the visualization elements of the visualization area. In various embodiments, the facility operates with respect to document portions of a variety of kinds, including such nonexclusive examples as sections, pages, columns, paragraphs, lines, sentences, nodes of a graph making up a document, outline elements, spreadsheet cells, spreadsheet tabs, graphs, etc. These can occur in documents of a wide variety of types, including textual word processing documents; spreadsheets; slideshow documents; outline documents; lay, technical or architectural drawings documents; artistic documents; timeline documents; database records; webpage documents; emails and other types of messaging documents; etc.
By performing in some or all of the ways described above, the facility provides a wealth of information on the behavior of users with respect to documents and their individual portions, and ultimately on their significance and usefulness.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the acts shown in
The document activity visualization area also includes a master timeline 640. The master timeline depicts a range of time, such as the range of time from the time at which the document was created to the present time. The master timeline also includes two slider thumbs 643 and 644 that the user can reposition—such as by grabbing and dragging them with a mouse, a stylus, or the user's finger—to redefine a subrange 645 of the entire range of time. In some embodiments, the facility uses this subrange to filter the interaction events represented in visualization elements 650, 660, and 670. For example, moving slider thumb 644 to the right (later in time) is likely to increase the number of interaction events represented among each of the visualization elements, while moving slider thumb 644 to the left (earlier in time) is likely to decrease the number of interaction events represented among each of the visualization events. The timeline also includes a time series graph 641 showing, at each point during the entire range of time, the number of interaction events of all types performed with respect to the document.
The document activity visualization area also includes a list 630 of certain interaction types, including all interaction types 631, Edit interaction type 632, View interaction type 633, Comment interaction type 634, Contribute interaction type 635, and Share interaction type 636. The user can select any of these—such as by touching or clicking on one—in order to change the interaction type for which the facility displays time series graph 641 in the timeline. It can be seen from the arrow to the left of all interaction types 631 that this interaction type is presently selected to be the basis for time series graph 641. In some embodiments, as shown, the facility displays in parentheses after each listed interaction type the number of occurrences of the interaction type that occurred during the time subrange. In some embodiments, not shown, the facility instead displays in these parentheses the number of occurrences of the interaction type that occurred during the entire range of time.
In some embodiments, the facility provides a processor-based device, comprising: a display; a processor; and a memory having contents that cause the processor to: display at least some of the content of a document; display a timeline representing a range of time; receive user input selecting a subrange of the range of time represented by the displayed timeline; access a set of user interactions performed with respect to the document, each user interaction of the set identifying a category of the user interaction and a time at which the user interaction was performed; for each of one or more categories of user interactions: select only those user interactions of the set identifying the category and identifying a time during the selected subrange of time; aggregate the user an action selected for the category to obtain an aggregation result; and display a visual representation of the aggregation result together with a visual indication of the category.
In some embodiments, the facility provides a computer-readable medium having contents configured to cause a computing system to: display at least some of the content of a document; display a timeline representing a range of time; receive user input selecting a subrange of the range of time represented by the displayed timeline; access a set of user interactions performed with respect to the document, each user interaction of the set identifying a category of the user interaction and a time at which the user interaction was performed; for each of one or more categories of user interactions: select only those user interactions of the set identifying the category and identifying a time during the selected subrange of time; aggregate the user an action selected for the category to obtain an aggregation result; and display a visual representation of the aggregation result together with a visual indication of the category.
In some embodiments, the facility provides a method comprising: displaying at least some of the content of a document; displaying a timeline representing a range of time; receiving user input selecting a subrange of the range of time represented by the displayed timeline; accessing a set of user interactions performed with respect to the document, each user interaction of the set identifying a category of the user interaction and a time at which the user interaction was performed; for each of one or more categories of user interactions: selecting only those user interactions of the set identifying the category and identifying a time during the selected subrange of time; aggregating the user an action selected for the category to obtain an aggregation result; and displaying a visual representation of the aggregation result together with a visual indication of the category.
In some embodiments, the facility provides a computer-readable medium having contents configured to cause a computing system to: display a visual representation of at least a portion of a document; and concurrently with and proximate to the visual representation, display a document information visualization area, the displayed document information visualization area including, for each of one or more categories of document interactions, a visual indication of a set of result values aggregated from individual document interaction events of the category, each individual document interaction event identifying a person who performed the individual document interaction event.
In some embodiments, the facility provides a processor-based device, comprising: a display; a processor; and a memory having contents that cause the processor to: display a visual representation of at least a portion of a document; and concurrently with and proximate to the visual representation, display a document information visualization area, the displayed document information visualization area including, for each of one or more categories of document interactions, a visual indication of a set of result values aggregated from individual document interaction events of the category, each individual document interaction event identifying a person who performed the individual document interaction event.
In some embodiments, the facility provides a method in a computing system, comprising: causing to be displayed content of a document; and concurrently with the document content, causing to be displayed a document information visualization area, the displayed document information visualization area including, for each of one or more categories of document interactions, a visual indication of a set of result values aggregated from individual document interaction events of the category.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the above-described facility may be straightforwardly adapted or extended in various ways. While the foregoing description makes reference to particular embodiments, the scope of the invention is defined solely by the claims that follow and the elements recited therein.