Patent ID: 9116931
Filing Date: 2015-08-25
Classification: G06F,G06K,G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method executed on a computing device comprising: assigning one or more row descriptors each including a plurality of row descriptor properties to one or more rows of an electronic plan, wherein the electronic plan comprises an electronic spreadsheet which includes a temporal component; assigning one or more column descriptors each including a plurality of column descriptor properties to one or more columns of the electronic plan; mapping one or more cells to one of the row descriptors using a unique row descriptor identifier and to one of the column descriptors using a unique column descriptor identifier, each of the one or more cells including a user-defined formula that references one or more other cell, the user-defined formula including the unique row descriptor identifier and the unique column descriptor identifier from the one or more other cells, the one or more other cells initially expressed by an abbreviation associated with a row descriptor and/or an abbreviation associated with a column descriptor; translating the abbreviation for the row descriptor and/or the abbreviation for the column descriptor to its corresponding unique row descriptor identifier and/or unique column descriptor identifier; and substituting any unique row descriptor identifier and/or any unique column descriptor identifier in the user-defined formula with a corresponding natural language description to render the user-defined formula in natural language terms, wherein the unique row descriptor identifiers differ from the corresponding row descriptors and the unique column descriptor identifiers differ from the corresponding column descriptors, and wherein using the unique row descriptor identifiers and the unique column descriptor identifiers, changes to the natural language descriptions are automatically rendered to any formulas that reference them; rendering each user-defined formula with encoding that uses the corresponding unique row descriptor identifier and/or unique column descriptor identifier, the encoding using a private function in which a parser maps a formula token to a particular property of the corresponding row descriptor and/or column descriptor; determining which cells in the plan are relevant to a pre-defined time point; assembling a plurality of the user-defined formulas associated with the determined cells in the plan; generating a self-describing spreadsheet plan report identifying the plurality of the user-defined formulas with natural language descriptions in the plan; displaying, in a graphical user interface, the report.