Lucent Technologies Inc.

Konstantin Laufer

Thomas J Ball

Peter Andrew Mataga

Lalita Jategaonkar Jagadeesan

Kenneth G Rehor

Peter John Danielsen

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 &ldquo;reactive constraint graphs&rdquo;, 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 &ldquo;look ahead&rdquo; 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.

Method and apparatus for providing interactive services with multiple interfaces

Interactive services are provided by employing a modular approach to implementing interactive services with multiple interfaces. Such an approach facilitates supporting natural language understanding interaction with users through use of interfaces that allow at least 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 a single interactive service logic that uses &ldquo;reactive constraint graphs&rdquo;, i.e., a form of event-driven graph, in which nodes contain a set of constraints on events. Specifically, control progresses from a node to a derivative node, i.e., &ldquo;child&rdquo;, only when all the constraints in the set on the node have been satisfied. A single set of constraints implicitly supports a significant number of the possible different orderings of inputs. Incomplete information is supported because the constraints in the set are evaluated as soon as possible. Correction of information is supported because information in the constraint set is updated upon receipt of new information. Indeed, use of the reactive constraint graphs allows nodes to be labeled, and allows control to revert to a prior node, i.e., ancestor, hence allowing the user to go back to prior points in the service. New inputs can be added to the constraint sets with a complexity polynomial of the order of the input set.

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Chicago, IL, United States of America

Konstantin Laufer