Patent ID: 11954613
Assignee: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 13:
14. A conversational system apparatus, comprising:
a processor;
an interface with an Internet accessible web server;
computer memory holding computer program instructions executed by the processor for establishing a logical connection between an indirect utterance and a transaction, the computer program instructions comprising:
program code, operative to determine that an utterance from a user input to the conversational system as part of a conversation between the conversational system and a user is an indirect utterance because the utterance does not match, using a first matching method, any transaction represented by a subgraph in a knowledge graph, wherein the knowledge graph is stored in a memory of the conversational system and wherein a set of transactions is to be performed at least in part by the web server and each transaction is represented by a respective subgraph in the knowledge graph;
program code, responsive to the determination that the utterance is the indirect utterance, operative to parse the indirect utterance to a first logical form using a second matching method, wherein the program code for the second match method comprises:
program code, operative to map the first logical form to a first subgraph in the knowledge graph;
program code responsive to mapping the first logical form to the first subgraph, operative to search for a path in the knowledge graph between the first subgraph and a second subgraph representing a first transaction in the set of transactions while transforming the first logical form using node and edge labels along the path to generate an intermediate logical form;
program code, operative to determine if a graph structure of the intermediate logical form matches a graph structure of a logical form of a second transaction in the set of transactions, wherein the mapping, searching and determining if the graph structure of the intermediate logical form matches the graph structure of the logical form of the second transaction are performed in response to the determination that the utterance is the indirect utterance;

and
program code, operative to perform a system action which completes at least part of the second transaction by communicating with the web server for a web resource mapped to the graph structure of the logical form of the second transaction;
wherein the determining the utterance is the indirect utterance, parsing, mapping, searching and performing operations are performed by the program instructions executed by the processor without requiring further input from the user.