Importance

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Abstract

Interactive services with multiple interfaces are realized by employing a modular approach to their implementation. Such an approach facilitates supporting natural language understanding interaction with users through use of interfaces that at least allow the user to provide information beyond what is currently being requested by the service, and/or different ordering of inputs, and/or incomplete information, and/or correction of information, and/or the return of control to prior points in the service. This is realized, in an embodiment of the invention, by employing an interactive service logic that uses 'reactive constraint graphs', i.e., a form of event-driven graph in which nodes contain constraints on events, in conjunction with a service monitor. The service monitor manages the communication between the service logic and the multiple user interfaces. As such it provides a communication mechanism in the form of a so-called 'look ahead' in which the user can input information beyond what is currently required by the interactive service. Specifically, in each round of user interaction, reactive constraint graphs report to the service monitor the set of events that are currently enabled. These enabled events correspond to the information the interactive service is currently requesting (or ready to accept) from a user. The user interfaces collect information (perhaps beyond this set) from the user and send it to the service monitor. The service monitor then matches the received information against the information requested by the service logic, and sends the information one event at a time to the service logic, in a priority order specified by the service provider. After each event is sent to the service logic from the service monitor, the service logic reports its new set of enabled events back to the service monitor. In turn, the service monitor sends another event that matches the enabled events to the service logic. The service monitor then notifies the user interfaces to send a new collection, i.e., set, of information from the individual users only when no current information matches the enabled events. This approach advantageously allows a user to input information beyond what is currently needed by the interactive service.

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First Claim