Determining stages of intent using text processing

Abstract

A messaging server provides conversational text subsets to a machine-learned model that analyzes the text subsets to identify intents expressed therein. The messaging server determines intent groups associated with the text subsets based on the expressed intents. An intent group describes a category representing a subject area in which a text subset may express intent, and also describes a stage of the category representing a strength of the expressed intent. The messaging server applies decay factors to the intent groups. The decay factors include decay rates that describe how long the types of intents represented by the intent groups are maintained. The messaging server has access to suggestions having associated targeting criteria including intent groups to which the suggestions are targeted. The message server uses the targeting criteria to select suggestions targeted to users associated with particular text subsets, and delivers the selected suggestions to the users.