Intelligent Query System for Email Attachment Suggestions

Solution Overview

Problem

Users face inefficiencies in attaching content to emails, as they often need to manually search for requested documents or URLs within their mailbox or other repositories, consuming time and resources.

Innovation Solution

An intelligent query system automatically suggests email attachments by processing messages for content requests, constructing queries, and ranking relevant entities from local and remote storage, providing contextual recommendations within email conversations.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If users manually search for requested content in their mailbox or repositories, then they can find and attach the correct content, but this process consumes significant time and hardware resources

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveaccuracy of finding requested contentVSAvoidtime spent on manual search

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by automatically analyzing the request message content, extracting keywords, and pre-ranking potential attachment entities before the user needs to attach anything. This eliminates the need for users to manually search through their mailbox, as the system has already prepared ranked suggestions based on the message context and user's attachment history.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system enables self-service by automatically generating attachment suggestions without requiring user intervention in the search process. The intelligent query system autonomously processes the request message, constructs search queries, retrieves potential attachments, and ranks them based on relevance, allowing the user to simply select from the pre-ranked options.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #25Self-service

2Measurement precision

If users manually search for requested content in their mailbox or repositories, then they can find and attach the correct content, but this process consumes significant hardware resources

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveaccuracy of finding requested contentVSAvoidhardware resource consumption

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by automatically analyzing the request message content, extracting keywords, and pre-ranking potential attachment entities before the user needs to attach anything. This eliminates the need for users to manually search through their mailbox, as the system has already prepared ranked suggestions based on the message context and user's attachment history.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system enables self-service by automatically generating attachment suggestions without requiring user intervention in the search process. The intelligent query system autonomously processes the request message, constructs search queries, retrieves potential attachments, and ranks them based on relevance, allowing the user to simply select from the pre-ranked options.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #25Self-service

3Productivity

If the system provides automatic attachment suggestions by processing messages and searching repositories, then user efficiency improves, but the system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveemail attachment efficiencyVSAvoidsystem complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system achieves multi-functionality by integrating multiple capabilities into a single intelligent query system: message analysis, keyword extraction, query construction, repository search, entity ranking, and suggestion presentation. This unified approach handles various types of content requests (documents, URLs, images) across different storage locations (mailbox, local repository, cloud storage) through a single cohesive process.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

Solution Approach 2:

The system introduces an intermediary intelligent query system that acts as a mediator between the user's manual search process and the automated attachment provision. This intermediary component analyzes messages, generates queries, and retrieves ranked suggestions, effectively bridging the gap between simple user interaction and complex backend processing.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Data Source

PatentUS11556548B2Intelligent query system for attachments

Publication Date: 2023.01.17 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

AI summary

Systems and methods are provided that automatically process a message input, construct an intelligent query based on the processing of the message input, and provide at least one attachable entity according to the processing results and the intelligent query. In some example aspects, a message is received. A natural language processor to determine if the message is requesting content may then process the message. If the message is determined to be requesting content, then candidate sub-queries may be generated to serve as a training set for a query that will be sent to an external search engine to retrieve the attachable entity. The sub-queries may be ranked in order of relevance and performance score. The highest ranked sub-queries may then be used in the actual query that is fired against the external search engine. The external search engine may search local and remote repositories for the top K most relevant attachable entities and present them to a user for attachment in a reply message.