Soft Record Generation for Contextual Contact Identification
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing communication technologies do not effectively retrieve and store telephone numbers with associated contextual information, leading to user inefficiency in identifying contacts from call history lists.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that generate and save 'soft records' combining telephone numbers with contextual information, allowing users to easily identify contacts by automatically associating contextual data with communication mechanisms, such as email addresses, using a caller identifier agent that can extract information through pattern recognition and heuristic methods.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If only telephone numbers are stored in call history lists, then device complexity is reduced, but information completeness deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a server as an intermediary component that handles the complex tasks of extracting contextual information from communications and maintaining soft records. This mediator approach allows the device to gain enhanced information capabilities without significantly increasing local device complexity, as the server performs the heavy processing work.
Solution Approach 2:
The system segments functionality between the device and server. The device captures basic communication data (telephone numbers), while the server handles complex information extraction, contextual analysis, and soft record maintenance. This segmentation allows each component to focus on specific tasks, improving overall system efficiency.
2Ease of operation
If contextual information is automatically extracted and associated with telephone numbers, then ease of operation is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements self-service by automatically extracting contextual information from communications and creating soft records without requiring user intervention. The process occurs transparently in the background, with the system serving itself by capturing, processing, and organizing information automatically, thereby improving ease of operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The server performs preliminary actions by pre-processing communications to extract contextual information and create soft records before the user needs to access contact information. This advance preparation eliminates the need for users to perform manual searches or extractions, significantly improving operational ease.
3Loss of information
If soft records are created for each communication, then information completeness is improved, but storage requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple pieces of information (telephone number, contextual data, communication metadata) into a single soft record structure. This consolidation approach improves information completeness by capturing all relevant details in one unified record, while being more space-efficient than storing separate data structures for each information type.
Data Source
AI summary
An approach for retrieving and storing telephone numbers along with related contextual information associated with inbound/outbound communications to/from a device. The approach includes a method that includes combining, by at least one processing device, identification information of an entity and a related communication mechanism used to initiate a communication to a device. The method further includes providing, by the at least one processing device, a soft record that includes the identification information and the related communication mechanism.