Automated Email Order Tracking Consolidation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Users face difficulties in consolidating order tracking information across multiple sources, requiring manual effort to gather and filter relevant data from various merchant emails, which is inefficient and time-consuming.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that automatically consolidates order tracking information by accessing a user's email inbox, applying specific rules to identify relevant emails from known providers, and updating a database with order status, using domain identification, email subject criteria, and body analysis to filter and extract tracking and order information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If users manually gather and filter order tracking information from multiple merchant emails, then they can obtain consolidated order status, but it requires significant manual effort and time
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service by automatically accessing the user's email inbox, identifying relevant order tracking emails from multiple merchants, extracting order status information, and consolidating it into a unified view without requiring manual user intervention. The system serves itself by performing the consolidation task autonomously.
Solution Approach 2:
The system acts as an intermediary between the user's email inbox and the consolidated order tracking interface. It mediates by automatically accessing emails from multiple merchants, filtering relevant information, extracting order status data, and presenting a unified consolidated view to the user, thereby eliminating the need for manual information gathering.
2Loss of information
If users access multiple merchant interfaces to view order information, then they can obtain complete order status, but it requires navigating through multiple sources which is inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges order tracking information from multiple merchant interfaces into a single consolidated view. It combines data from different merchants' email communications, extracts relevant order status information, and presents everything in one unified interface, eliminating the need to navigate through multiple separate merchant platforms.
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides universal access to order tracking information from any merchant through a single interface. It is designed to handle emails from multiple different merchants, extract order status data from various formats, and present a unified consolidated view, making it multi-functional across different merchant platforms.
3Measurement precision
If the system automatically accesses email inbox and applies rules to identify relevant emails, then consolidation accuracy improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the email identification process into distinct rule-based components: domain matching rules to identify merchant emails, subject line criteria to filter relevant order emails, and body analysis rules to extract order status information. This segmentation improves accuracy by systematically applying specific criteria to different aspects of email identification and processing.
Data Source
AI summary
In one embodiment, a method includes accessing an email inbox of a user and determining a set of emails received since a previous access. For each email in the set, the method includes determining whether the email is sent from a domain identified in a domain database; if not, then the method moves to the next email; if yes, then the method iteratively applies a set of email-subject off-ramp criteria to the email's subject. When an off-ramp criterion is met, then the method moves to the next email; if no email-subject off-ramp criterion is met, then the method iteratively applies a set of email-subject on-ramp criteria to the subject of the email. When any email-subject on-ramp criterion is met, then the method determines an order status of an order associated with the email and updates an order tracking database with an entry identifying the order status.