Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Tellme Networks, Inc.

Lisa Joy Stifelman

Larry Paul Heck

Madhusudan Chinthakunta

Anne K Sullivan

Angus Macdonald Davis

Rao Subrahmanyeswara Surapaneni

David Mitby

Adam Elman

Shane Jeremy Landry

Sarah A Caplener

Karen M Cross

Hadi Partovi

Joseph Spencer King

Brandon William Porter

Dilek Zeynep Hakkani-Tur

Christian Klein

Alice Jane Bernheim Brush

Rajeev Khurana

Matthew T Marx

Justin B Ward

Ken H Thai

Eugene Koh

Sarangarajan Parthasarathy

David Bryan Alpert

Roderick Steven Brathwaite

Scott James Bailey

Gary Clayton

Haleh Partovi

Kyle D Sims

Darby McDonough Bailey

Adina Magdalena Trufinescu

Michael Bodell

Emily Grace Sappington

Mouni Reddy

Aleksandar Antonijevic

Jeffrey Spencer Davison

Kevin J Endres

Vashutosh Agrawal

Bill Sutton

Annie Lenore Smith

Sara Nopwan Siritaratiwat

Sachin Venugopalan

Stephanos Tryphonas

Tvrtko Tadic

Chad Michael Roberts

Oscar E Murillo

Su Chuin Leong

Jan-Kristian Markiewicz

Kamran Rajabi Zargahi

Nikrouz Ghotbi

August Kathryn Niehaus

Ashok Kuppusamy

Julian James Odell

Aleksandar Uzelac

Jaclyn Carley Knapp

Daniel R Dole

Hisami Suzuki

Vishwac Sena Kannan

Jeffrey Craig Kunins

Jason Ryan Farmer

Daniel J Hwang

John Giannandrea

Michael S McCue

Kelly Rose McArthur

Vikram Padmakar Bapat

Oliver Scholz

Daphne Huetu Luong

Christopher Michael Becker

Isaiah Ng

Kristoffer S Schultz

Roberto Sonnino

James Francis Gilsinan, Iv

Sarah Siritaratiwat

Addison Kenan Linville

Robert Juan Miller

Stefanie Lyn Tomko

Molly Rose Suver

Tulasi Menon

Reza Ferrydiansyah

John Henson

Jin Xu

Eric Neal Loewenthal

Karl Rolando Henderson, Jr

Shanna Xiao Chen

Tyrone Samson

Kathleen J Lee

Anne Kenny

Cheryl Nicole Platz

David A Walker

Nikhil Rajkumar Jain

Craig Fox

André Roberto Lima Tapajós

Hanjiang Zhou

Kaichun Wu

Steven DiCarlo

Yuhua Guan

Urmila Singhal

Suheyla E B Onalan

Stefan Valianu

Angus MacDonald David

Systems and methods are provided for a calendar consultation with a user. The disclosed technology uses at least a personal profile or a personal scheduling model and identifies issues in scheduled calendar events associated with the user. Based on a number of the identified issues, a calendar consultant informs the user about the identified issues and prompts the user whether to interactively resolve the issues through a calendar consultation session. During the calendar consultation session, the calendar consultant interactively informs about issues, suggests options for resolving the issues, confirms an option to perform, and updates the calendar schedule. The calendar consultant proactively suggests the user to participate in interactive calendar consultation sessions and improves productivity of the user performing tasks.

Calendar consultation dialogue processor

A method of operating a computing device in support of improved accessibility includes displaying a user interface to an application on a display screen of the computing device, wherein the computing device includes an accessibility assistant that reads an audible description of an element of the user interface; initiating, on the computing device, a virtual assistant that conducts an audible conversation between a user and the virtual assistant through at least a microphone and a speaker associated with the computing device, wherein the virtual assistant is not integrated with an operating system of the computing device; inhibiting an ability of the accessibility assistant to read the audible description of the element of the user interface; and upon transition of the virtual assistant from an active state, enabling the ability of the accessibility assistant.

Interplay between digital assistive technology

Systems and methods include activation of a first voice assistant application to execute a first user dialog session, the first application associated with a first voice keyword and, while the first application is active and executing the first session, reception of second audio signals representing a second voice keyword associated with a second voice assistant application, determination, in response to reception of the second audio signals, that the first application is uninterruptable, wherein the second application remains inactive in response to reception of the second audio signals, reception of a signal from the first application indicating that the first application is interruptable, reception of third audio signals representing the second keyword and, in response to reception of the third audio signals, determination that the first application is interruptable and transmission of an activation signal to the second application to activate the second application and execute a second user dialog session.

Activation management for multiple voice assistants

A primary virtual assistant and local virtual assistant herein can provide secondary information, including, without limitation, user-specific information, without having direct access to such information. For example, a user may invoke a secondary virtual assistant, through the local virtual assistant connected to a primary virtual assistant system. This invocation may be sent through the primary virtual assistant to the third party provider, i.e., the secondary virtual assistant. The secondary virtual assistant has access to the secondary information, for example, email, calendars, other types of information specifically associated with the user or learned from past user actions while this information is not directly available to the primary virtual assistant. This secondary information is then provided to the local virtual assistant in response to the invocation to be provided to the user.

Personalized updates upon invocation of a service

A system and method include detection of a user utterance of one of plurality of voice keywords, each of the plurality of voice keywords associated with a respective voice assistant application, determination, in response to the detection of the one of the plurality of respective voice keywords, of whether any of the plurality of voice assistant applications are designated as uninterruptable, and, if it is determined that none of the plurality of voice assistant applications are designated as uninterruptable, activation of the one of the plurality of voice assistant applications associated with the detected keyword.

Methods, systems, and computer programs are presented for a smart communications assistant with an audio interface. One method includes an operation for getting messages addressed to a user. The messages are from one or more message sources and each message comprising message data that includes text. The method further includes operations for analyzing the message data to determine a meaning of each message, for generating a score for each message based on the respective message data and the meaning of the message, and for generating a textual summary for the messages based on the message scores and the meaning of the messages. A speech summary is created based on the textual summary and the speech summary is then sent to a speaker associated with the user. The audio interface further allows the user to verbally request actions for the messages.

Smart communications assistant with audio interface

Input access may be provided. A user interface may be displayed on a user device. Upon receiving a selection of at least one element of the user interface, a plurality of input receiving modes of the user device may be activated.

Equal access to speech and touch input

A dynamically created and automatically updated personalized cloud of mobile tasks may be displayed on an interactive visual display via a personalized cloud generator application. The personalized cloud generator application may receive and/or capture information representing a mobile task performed by a mobile computing device user. The personalized cloud generator application may then store the information and determine a relevance of a given performed mobile task. If the relevance of the performed mobile task meets a prescribed threshold, the personal cloud generator application may display a selectable visual representation (e.g., selectable icon) of the performed mobile task. Given a user's activity, the visual representation may be automatically updated (displayed, removed, moved, resized, etc.) based on the information received and/or captured. Subsequent selection of the displayed visual representation allows quick and easy access or performance of the associated mobile task.

Personalized cloud of mobile tasks

Providing a random factoid in response to a user trigger is provided. Aspects are directed to a device, method, and computer-readable medium to provide random factoids responsive to a triggering event. Various inputs such as user taps, gestures, voice commands, environment commands, etc., are monitored to recognize a triggering event associated with the random factoid system. Upon determining that the input is a triggering event, a random factoid is randomly selected and provided to the user. The factoid can be a fun fact or a helpful learning tip. In some examples, the random factoid system provides a contextual random factoid based one or more contextual factors, such as geographic location of the device, the user's interaction history, the user's demographic data, etc., thus providing an improved user experience.

Random factoid generation

An augmented conversational understanding architecture may be provided. Upon receiving a natural language phrase from a user, the phrase may be translated into a search phrase and a search action may be performed on the search phrase.

Augmented conversational understanding architecture

Identification of user intents may be provided. A plurality of network applications may be identified, and an ontology associated with each of the plurality of applications may be defined. If a phrase received from a user is associated with at least one of the defined ontologies, an action associated with the network application may be executed.

Task driven user intents

Techniques are described herein that are capable of suggesting intent frame(s) for user request(s). For instance, the intent frame(s) may be suggested to elicit a request from a user. An intent frame is a natural language phrase (e.g., a sentence) that includes at least one carrier phrase and at least one slot. A slot in an intent frame is a placeholder that is identified as being replaceable by one or more words that identify an entity and/or an action to indicate an intent of the user. A carrier phrase in an intent frame includes one or more words that suggest a type of entity and/or action that is to be identified by the one or more words that may replace the corresponding slot. In accordance with these techniques, the intent frame(s) are suggested in response to determining that natural language functionality of a processing system is activated.

Suggesting intent frame(s) for user request(s)

A computing device is provided, which may include an input device configured to receive natural user input, and an application program executed by a processor of the computing device, the application program configured to: retrieve an electronic calendar including calendar data for one or more meeting events, each meeting event including a meeting time and meeting data, receive a generic meeting invocation request via a natural user input detected by the input device, based on at least receiving the generic meeting invocation request at a point in time, search the electronic calendar for a meeting event having a meeting time that is within a threshold time period of the point in time that the natural user input was received, and start the meeting event including processing the meeting data for the meeting event.

Starting meeting using natural user input

Individuals may utilize devices to engage in conversations about topics respectively associated with a location (e.g., restaurants where the individuals may meet for dinner). Often, the individual momentarily withdraws from the conversation in order to issue commands to the device to retrieve and present such information, and may miss parts of the conversation while interacting with the device. Additionally, the individual often explores such topics individually on a device and conveys such information to the other individuals through messages, which is inefficient and error-prone. Presented herein are techniques enabling devices to facilitate conversations by monitoring the conversation for references, by one individual to another (rather than as a command to the device), to a topic associated with a location. In the absence of a command from an individual, the device may automatically present a map alongside a conversation interface showing the location(s) of the topic(s) referenced in the conversation.

Facilitating conversations with automated location mapping

Growing community of inventors

Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Lisa Joy Stifelman