Active lab

Abstract

Various embodiments provide a tool, referred to herein as “Active Lab” that can be used to develop, debug, and maintain knowledge bases. These knowledge bases (KBs) can then engage various applications, technology, and communications protocols for the purpose of task automation, real time alerting, system integration, knowledge acquisition, and various forms of peer influence. In at least some embodiments, a KB is used as a virtual assistant that any real person can interact with using their own natural language. The KB can then respond and react however the user wants: answering questions, activating applications, or responding to actions on a web page.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A system comprising:
 one or more computer-readable storage media;   computer-readable instructions stored on the one or more computer-readable storage media which, when executed, provide a tool to enable a user to create and maintain a knowledge base, wherein the tool is configured to:
 enable a user to create one or more units, wherein a unit comprises a response paired with one or more patterns that will trigger the response; 
   wherein a pattern for a unit includes at least one concept and wherein a concept is composed of:
 vocab terms comprising a grouping of unambiguous synonyms and misspellings, 
 helper terms comprising words that have no unambiguous synonyms, and/or 
 building blocks comprising one or more of a list of vocab/helper terms or a list of concepts; and 
   wherein the tool further enables a user to test patterns to ascertain that a particular pattern will result in an associated response.   
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the tool enables units to be grouped together in situation groups. 
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein a concept comprises a breakdown of ideas in a test question. 
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein a unit may have multiple patterns featuring different combinations of concepts. 
     
     
         5 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein concepts can have an order and/or a proximity, wherein:
 if a concept has an order, a pattern will trigger if an input is received in that order; and   if a concept has a proximity, a pattern will trigger if an input has a defined proximity.   
     
     
         6 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the tool utilizes cascades, wherein cascades can be selected from a group of cascades comprising:
 a pre-vocab cascade that takes in contractions and outputs separate words,   a vocab cascade that takes in synonyms and outputs a vocab,   a post-vocab cascade that takes in separate compound words and outputs single vocab words,   a concept cascade that takes in vocab and helper terms and outputs concepts, or   a unit cascade that takes in concepts and outputs a response.   
     
     
         7 . The system of  claim 6 , wherein a cascade provides a FPML runtime contained within a larger runtime. 
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 6 , wherein at least some cascades take, as input, output from other cascades. 
     
     
         9 . The system of  claim 6 , wherein a cascade can be set to one or more of: “Match All” or “Best Match”. 
     
     
         10 . The system of  claim 6 , wherein the tool provides a dockable window for cascades that enable cascades to be created and for the type of output for a cascade to be determined. 
     
     
         11 . The system of  claim 10 , wherein cascades are organized by type, and where the user may edit by name, match type, response, behavior, pre-process action and level settings. 
     
     
         12 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the tool is configured to provide a main application window, wherein the main application window includes a drop down menu bar, multiple tabs, a main display that displays currently selected/active tabs, a dockable window display, and a status bar. 
     
     
         13 . The system of  claim 12 , wherein the multiple tabs comprise:
 a tests tab,   chat review tab,   debugger tab,   concept editor tab,   unit editor tab, and   an editor tab.   
     
     
         14 . The system of  claim 12 , wherein the menu bar is configured to enable a user to access and deploy FPML files. 
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 14 , wherein the tool enables FPML files to be deployed to a server. 
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 12 , wherein the dockable window display is configured to enable a user to view one or more of: building blocks, cascades, change requests, components, concepts, directives, dynamic functions, helper terms, input files, knowledge trees, lex types, resource files, response blocks, search control, static files, test conditions, unit search, units, unprintable items, unused items, URLs, vocab wild cards, or web links. 
     
     
         17 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the knowledge base comprises a FPML knowledge base. 
     
     
         18 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the tool is configured to enable a user to produce documents comprising one or more of: (a) an FPML statistics document displaying percentage statistics of unit test questions or (b) a print units document displaying all units along with their respective test questions. 
     
     
         19 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the tool comprises a text-to-speech component which provides an ability to translate on-screen text into audio speech. 
     
     
         20 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the tool provides a vocab dockable window that includes a vocab display tree that displays an organization of a vocabulary and a search tree that enables searches of cascades.