3434 results about "Documentation procedure" patented technology

Documents and other items can be delivered electronically from sender to recipient with a level of trustedness approaching or exceeding that provided by a personal document courier. A trusted electronic go-between can validate, witness and / or archive transactions while, in some cases, actively participating in or directing the transaction. Printed or imaged documents can be marked using handwritten signature images, seal images, electronic fingerprinting, watermarking, and / or steganography. Electronic commercial transactions and transmissions take place in a reliable, "trusted" virtual distribution environment that provides significant efficiency and cost savings benefits to users in addition to providing an extremely high degree of confidence and trustedness. The systems and techniques have many uses including but not limited to secure document delivery, execution of legal documents, and electronic data interchange (EDI).

A method and apparatus for displaying the evolution of an electronic document (e.g. word-processing document, portable-document-format file, spreadsheet, drawing, and the like), containing tracked changes, is disclosed. In accordance with the disclosed method and apparatus, the revisions of an electronic document may be treated as parent frames. In between the parent frames, child frames may be constructed from the combined images of their parent frames. To form a child frame, an image of a parent frame has a degree of translucency as it is combined with the translucent image of the other parent frame, such that every child frame contains traces of the images of both its parent frames. An input device (e.g. keyboard, mouse, touchpad, stylus, voice activation, and the like) may be used to control the frame visible to the user at any one time. The user may use the input device to traverse the frames at various speeds and in either direction, creating the visual illusion that a certain revision of the document is being morphed into its future revisions—or stripped off its changes as it is morphed into previous revisions—depending on the direction chosen by the user.

In a collaborative computing environment, a method and system for displaying revisions associated with a hosted electronic document are disclosed. In accordance with the disclosed method and system, select revisions of an electronic document may be displayed to a user as media (e.g. Flash™ animation, QuickTime™, MPEG, Windows™ Media Video, RealMedia™, DivX™, DHTML, etc.) in which the revisions are animated, recreating a visual history play-back of the evolution of the document. The animation may include an image of each selected revision, morphing into another image of another revision. The animation may be displayed in various orders (e.g. chronologically, by user, etc.) The user may use an application on a client device (e.g. a web-browser, a web-browser with a media plug-in, a media players, etc.) to view the media file and control various properties of the animation playback (e.g. speed, direction, pausing, skipping forward or back, etc.).

The disclosure provides for creating a finalized document relating to a transaction. A buyer selects documents associated with a proposed transaction and indicates trade terms of an agreement relating to the documents selected. The trade terms are presented to a seller on an electronic form via an electronic document platform. The electronic form includes a combined purchase order proforma invoice, a transportation document, and a shipping document. The seller can amend the trade terms on the form, and each amendment creates a new version of the form. Negotiations of the trade terms between the buyer and the seller are conducted electronically and the negotiated fonn detailing the negotiation of the trade terms is generated and displayed electronically, also. A compliance check is performed and is triggered in response to a digital signature of the form. Payment is initiated to the seller after a verification of credit of the buyer.

A method on an information processing unit performing steps for creating a user interface (UI) to assemble a document that conforms to a particular document type definition. The method hides the specific syntax of document type definitions such as DTDs and schemas from the user. The method begins with a selection from a user for a document type or an existing document. Once the document type is selected or determined from the existing document the document type definitions are retrieved. The document type definitions include one or more elements. The method parses the elements which are subsequently mapped to one or more interface controls such as icons, pull-down menus, buttons, selection boxes, progress indicators, on-off checkmarks, scroll bars, windows, window edges for resizing the window, toggle buttons, forms, and UI widgets. UI can be GUIs or interactive voice response systems. A UI editor is presented by assembling the one or more interface controls without presenting specific document type definition syntax to a user. The UI editor permits the user to create and edit the content objects that are associated with the interface controls. The content objects are aggregated in an XML compatible format and ready to be checked in for further processing. The method permits specific UI interfaces to be created for specific publishing environments and at the same time permit the creation of reusable content objects.

A system for electronic file collaboration among multiple users is implemented using command messages transmitted on dedicated network channels established between conference participants in a peer-to-peer architecture with total autonomy from a central server. The system employs owner-in-control methodology to allow direct transmission of copies of documents among participants by permission, and to prevent storage of copies of documents used in a conference by participants. Mark-ups, additions, and other actions occurring on a conference document can only be saved by the document owner. An advanced viewer engine is provided for reading, displaying and manipulating electronic data in texts, tables, vectors and 3D model formats, as well as common raster images. A proxy module allows data transmitted through IPFW routers or firewall devices with sufficient authentications and security measures.

A database server contains pointers to useful information, such as on the World Wide Web. Users of the server may have hypertext links added automatically into documents they submit. Users may additionally contribute to the link database, thereby extending it, and may add additional qualifying information pertaining to the links.

A system for facilitating payment transaction disputes is provided. According to one aspect of the system, a user, such as an issuer, is allowed to use the system to resolve a disputed transaction. Based on information provided by a cardholder, the issuer is able to use the system to retrieve transactional information relating to the disputed transaction reported by the customer for review. When the issuer uses the system to retrieve information relating to the disputed transaction, a case folder is created. The case folder is a repository for storing all the relevant information and documentation relating to the disputed transaction. Using the information retrieved by the system, the issuer then determines whether to initiate a dispute. Alternatively, the system can also be used by an acquirer to respond to a dispute, usually on behalf of one of its merchant. If a dispute is responded to, a questionnaire is then created by the system. Alternatively, the issuer may decline to initiate a dispute and either seek additional information from the cardholder or deny the cardholder's inquiry. The case folder and the questionnaire are created for a specific disputed transaction. The questionnaire is designed to capture information from the cardholder and / or the issuer relating to the disputed transaction. The questionnaire may be pre-populated with previously retrieved transactional information which is stored in the case folder. Relevant documents in support of the disputed transaction may also be attached as part of the questionnaire. Various parties to the dispute may then provide relevant information (including supporting documentation) to the system. The relevant information provided by the parties is maintained in the case folder. The system then keeps track of the relevant timeframes for the case folder to ensure that each party to the dispute is given the correct period of time to respond during the processing of a dispute. Prior to filing the dispute for arbitration or compliance, the system permits the parties to resolve the dispute amongst themselves without the help of an arbiter through pre-arbitration and pre-compliance. If the parties to the dispute are unable to resolve the dispute on their own, the system also permits the parties to resolve the dispute via arbitration or compliance with the help of an arbiter. The system provides the arbiter with access to the case folder to allow the arbiter to render an informed decision on the dispute.

The present invention allows computer users to integrate any annotation, including ink, highlighter, text-based notes and audio, directly into a Web-based document (WBD) displayed by a Web browser. This integration enables others to view the personalized annotated WBD, which retains its original active links and properties, over the Internet without the need for specialized software. Annotations are integrated into WBDs by freezing the WBD, overlaying an image file containing the annotations onto the WBD, and enabling browser events to pass through the image layer. Annotations may also be integrated into WBDs by using component object technology. The present invention collects and organizes annotated WBDs, and provides users with an intuitive Web-based interface for accessing, viewing and searching the annotated WBDs. Users may annotate blank WBDs, effectively converting their Web browsers into online notebooks / scrapbooks. The present invention also provides users with many novel interface techniques, such as dog-ears and its associated navigation tools, splitting pages, turning pages, selecting and copying various portions of a WBD (including shaking out a copy), and marking menus suited for right-handed or left-handed users.

A method for using a digital electrical apparatus to electrically process signals in generating output for insurance documentation for a first insurance policy for a first risk having a claims cost reflecting: a concurrent second insurance policy for a second risk, the second risk being different from the first, the policies being for the same insured person, and the second policy affecting a claims cost of the first policy; the method including the steps of: in a digital electrical computer apparatus comprising a digital computer having a processor, the processor electrically connected to a memory device for storing and retrieving operations including machine-readable signals in the memory device, to an input device for receiving input data and converting the input data into input electrical data, to a visual display unit for converting output electrical data into output having a visual presentation, to a printer for converting the output electrical data into printed documentation, wherein the processor is programmed to control the apparatus to receive the input data and to produce the output data by steps including: inputting actuarial assumptions defining the first insurance policy; and computing a value of a specific financial attribute of the first insurance policy; the method further including the step of inserting the value of the financial attribute in the first insurance policy and other printed documentation related to the first insurance policy.

A shared markup system and a method are provided for supporting Web co-browsing. Based on the hyper-text markup language (HTML), the markup system is interoperable across different platforms and Web browsers and provides for online annotation, of shared HTML documents, directly within the browser's windows. The annotations created by the markup system are realized using HTML components that are composed dynamically. Synchronization and control of the browser's environment are also provided to achieve uniform participants' views.

A system is disclosed that includes components and features for enabling enterprise users to securely access enterprise resources (documents, data, application servers, etc.) using their mobile devices. An enterprise can use some or all components of the system to, for example, securely but flexibly implement a BYOD (bring your own device) policy in which users can run both personal applications and secure enterprise applications on their mobile devices. The system may, for example, implement policies for controlling mobile device accesses to enterprise resources based on device attributes (e.g., what mobile applications are installed), user attributes (e.g., the user's position or department), behavioral attributes, and other criteria. Client-side code installed on the mobile devices may further enhance security by, for example, creating a secure container for locally storing enterprise data, creating a secure execution environment for running enterprise applications, and / or creating secure application tunnels for communicating with the enterprise system.

Systems and methods consistent with various disclosed embodiments provide for collaborating information over a computer network. In one embodiment, a system is disclosed for collaborating information over a network. The system may include a storage device and one or more processors. The processor(s) may maintain documents in the storage device and publish content links to the documents in a workspace rendered by a collaboration platform. The processor(s) may provide content to the collaboration platform in response to a content link selection by a reviewer and receive the reviewer's changes, with the collaboration platform temporarily storing the document in a virtual memory for rendering to the reviewer and deleting it after the communication session ends. The processor(s) may synchronize the changes bi-directionally from the workspace with the original document through a collaboration document, such that the original document remains unaltered, and by re-publishing an updated content link to the workspace.

The present invention relates to linking on-line data to printed documents, such as business cards, envelopes, stickers, stationary, letterhead, résumés, etc. In one embodiment, a card-user registers with an on-line database and receives a gallery item including a steganographically-embedded unique identifier. The gallery item, such as a graphical background, text, shading, graphic, etc., is integrated and then printed with a document. The printed document can then be presented an optical-scanner, which outputs data. The output data is decoded to identify the unique identifier. The unique identifier is then used to index into the on-line database to retrieve information related to the proprietor of the document. In one embodiment, the on-line database includes features such as providing an immediate contact number, translation and / or pronunciation ability, and storage of audio / video files.

An apparatus for improving productivity of human reviewers of transcribed documents generated by media conversion systems includes a server / client network of computers, memories and file systems. The server receives and stores voice files created by users of the system. The server is configured for coupling to a speech-to-text media conversion system to receive converted text files of the audio voice files. The server analyzes the converted text files and routes the converted files to the appropriate reviewers according to an adaptive algorithm. The converted files are displayed on the assigned reviewer's screen at the reviewer's workstation. To aid the reviewer in pinpointing potential errors, the workstation displays different segments of the converted files in different colors to reflect different confidence levels of transcription accuracy. Portions of the original voice message that correspond to the potential errors are played back for the reviewer. The reviewers' workstations also perform productivity enhancing functions such as spelling and grammar checking. After the reviewer has made all the necessary corrections, the reviewed files are transmitted back to the server to be stored and accessed by the users. A user database in the server is also updated to store recurrent user-specific errors corrected by the reviewer. A language analysis system is also disposed to adaptively correct user-specific errors in future reviews according to the information in the user database.

An apparatus and method for an information processing system are disclosed for improved manipulation of documents consisting of multiple pages. In one embodiment, a multi-page document is depicted by a representation of a stack of pages and a request area through which an operator may navigate within the stack. In another embodiment, a multi-page document is depicted by static icon representing the stack and a dynamic miniature replica of a current page within the stack. Additional functions are disclosed such as adding one or more pages to a document, removing a page from a stack, rotating a page within a stack, and adding annotations to a page.

An interactive electronic equipment document production system is disclosed. Documents from different sources are standardized in a conversion process, provided with tags in a tagging process that provides information connecting an initial locating with another location and are evaluated in a building process where tags and tag information are evaluated. Though the use of associated files, CAD files and generic pictures can be provided with tags and links without modifying the actual CAD file or generic picture.

An application on a mobile device provides for the initiation and submission of an insurance claim by capturing information and images of documents using an image capture capability, then processing the images to extract content which is transmitted to an insurance company for processing of the claim. Documents such as an automobile insurance card (AIC), driver's license, vehicle identification number (VIN), license plate, police report, damage estimate and repair invoice may all be captured and processed by image processing techniques on the mobile device or an image processing unit in order to extract relevant content. Other features and capabilities of the mobile device—such as video and image capture, location-based services, accelerometers and tracking—may automatically populate relevant fields of a claim report and permit the user to upload photographic and video evidence of an accident and related damage.

A method, system, and computer program product for selectively encrypting one or more elements of a document using style sheet processing. Disclosed is a policy-driven augmented style sheet processor (e.g. an Extensible Stylesheet Language, or “XSL”, processor) that creates a selectively-encrypted document (e.g. an Extensible Markup Language, or “XML”, document) carrying key-distribution material, such that by using an augmented document processor (e.g. an augmented XML processing engine), an agent can recover only the information elements for which it is authorized. The Document Type Definition (DTD) or schema associated with a document is modified, such that the DTD or schema specifies a reference to stored security policy to be applied to document elements. Each document element may specify a different security policy, such that the different elements of a single document can be encrypted differently (and, some elements may remain unencrypted). The key distribution material enables a document to be encrypted for decryption by an audience that is unknown at the time of document creation, and enables access to the distinct elements of a single encrypted document to be controlled for multiple users and / or groups of users. In this manner, group collaboration is improved by giving more people easier access to information for which they are authorized, while protecting sensitive data from unauthorized agents. A key recovery technique is also defined, whereby the entire document can be decrypted by an authorized agent regardless of how the different elements were originally encrypted and the access protections which were applied to those elements.

The digital photo organizing and tagging method includes software and a database that organizes digitized versions of dispersed collections of images such as photographs, pictures and other graphical objects from a variety of sources. The method facilitates describing, resizing, indexing, and sorting the different aspects contained in images. Features include documentation, e-mail, updating, version control, inclusion of video, embellishment, sound, animation, text to speech and, dynamic search. An Internet application facilitates annotation, organization, researching and sharing images and corresponding information collected at different times and places. Desktop / Internet applications link and relate images that share common elements. The same person found as a child in one image, as an adult in another, and referenced in a newspaper article is a relation example. The method collects the knowledge embedded in multiple images and produces well documented, organized, and clearly explained printable images, as well as dynamic albums of related images.

Methods, systems, and computer program products for improving the transcoding operations which are performed on structured documents (such as those encoded in the Hypertext Markup Language, or "HTML") through use of annotations. Source documents may be annotated according to one or more types of annotations. Representative types of annotations direct an annotation engine to perform selective clipping of document content, provide enhanced HTML form support, request node and / or attribute replacement or the insertion of HTML or other rendered markup syntax, and direct a transcoding engine to provide fine-grained transcoding preference support (such as controlling transcoding of tables on a per-row or per-column basis). The disclosed techniques may be used with statically-generated document content and with dynamically-generated content. Annotation is performed as a separate step preceding transcoding, and a modified document resulting from processing annotations may therefore be re-used for multiple different transcoding operations.

The present invention is a network architecture or framework that supports hosting and content distribution on a truly global scale. The inventive framework allows a Content Provider to replicate and serve its most popular content at an unlimited number of points throughout the world. The inventive framework comprises a set of servers operating in a distributed manner. The actual content to be served is preferably supported on a set of hosting servers (sometimes referred to as ghost servers). This content comprises HTML page objects that, conventionally, are served from a Content Provider site. In accordance with the invention, however, a base HTML document portion of a Web page is served from the Content Provider's site while one or more embedded objects for the page are served from the hosting servers, preferably, those hosting servers near the client machine. By serving the base HTML document from the Content Provider's site, the Content Provider maintains control over the content.

A system and method for enabling users to send and receive messages and other information from mobile devices and enabling users to access server-based information using mobile devices over wireless data networks are disclosed. The present invention further provides search capabilities on a wireless device. Search criteria may include searching messages (e.g., emails, memos, and / or other correspondences and documents) based on various fields, such as sender, date, subject and other parts of a message. Other search criteria may also be used. The present invention may also provide an application search form to perform various search functions. A search form may contain a formula field where the field may contain a select formula that may be evaluated on the server for the search operation. This formula typically may reference other fields on the search form.

A system, method and computer program product for the reflowing of content in a structured portable document format (PDF) document in its native format, including an application for adding and / or deleting content in the PDF document; a reflow mechanism in communication with the application and configured for reflowing content immediately following the added and / or deleted content until the end of the document. The reflowing for the added content includes shifting existing content after the added content to a physical location in the document immediately following the added content, and the reflowing for the deleted content includes shifting existing content after the deleted content to a physical location in the document to where the deleted content was originally located; and displaying the resulting document. The adding and / or deleting of the content and the reflowing of the content are performed while the document is maintained in its native format.

A document categorization system, including a clusterer for generating clusters of related electronic documents based on features extracted from the documents, and a filter module for generating a filter on the basis of the clusters to categorize further documents received by the system. The system may include an editor for manually browsing and modifying the clusters. The categorization of the documents is based on n-grams, which are used to determine significant features of the documents. The system includes a trend analyzer for determining trends of changing document categories over time, and for identifying novel clusters. The system may be implemented as a plug-in module for a spreadsheet application for permitting one-off or ongoing analysis of text entries in a worksheet.

A method and system for obtaining a network address stored in a peripheral device, and accessing a remote device at the network address to obtain information related to the peripheral device. When the peripheral device is connected to a host computer, the stored network address is read by the host computer. The network address is preferably determined by the host computer when a peripheral device, such as a USB device, is initially connected to the host device, or when the host device with a newly connected USB is energized. The network address is then used by the host device to communicate with a remote device so that information pertaining to the peripheral device, such as a device driver for the peripheral device, can be accessed by the host device at the remote device. In addition, the host device can download or automatically execute a program stored at the remote device, download and install an application program relating to use of the peripheral device, display a Web page that includes information pertinent to the peripheral device, download documentation for the peripheral device, access help information, download and install firmware into the peripheral device and / or access other material related to the peripheral device. Access of the remote device can be fully automated or can optionally be implemented only with the permission of the user.

A system for performing collaborative tasks which permits collaborators to determine the form of a model of the collaborative work, to modify the model in the course of the collaborative work, and to use the model to access information related to the collaborative work. A graphical user interface permits collaborators to view the model and the information accessible via the model in various ways as well as to modify the model and the information. Collaborators are organized into groups and a collaborator's group membership determines how the collaborator may access and modify the model and the related information. The information related to the collaborative work includes documents, discussions, email, reminders, and alerts. In a disclosed embodiment of the system, the model is made up of model entities which belong to hierarchies. A model entity may be a member of more than one hierarchy and the different hierarchies are used to provide different views of the model.

Provided are systems and methods for Web-based intelligent paperless document management where users can collect, store, and share all document from various locations. Also provided are systems and methods requiring minimal data reentry because of data extraction capabilities. Systems and methods described herein can deliver documents via internet to multiple persons without using barcodes or separator sheets for faxing or sending documents.

It is desirable to send documents to a user in such a way as to minimize the bandwidth and other computer resources required. To this end, a document may be categorized as (1) delta information (information that changes rapidly), (2) sub-template information (information that changes less frequently) and (3) template information, which changes very seldom. The template information and sub-template information are compressed and cached at a site remote from the requesting party. Compressing and caching both sub-template information and template information results in a significant savings of bandwidth and computing resources, such as would be required if the sub-template information were treated as delta information and were not stored in a cache as is the case in the prior art. This savings is enhanced when the compressed template and sub-template information are sent to a large number of users.