Patent ID: 8392351

Claim:
A system for generating temporal footprints to identify tasks, comprising: a determination module to identify one or more computer applications in use by a user; an event identification module to record one or more events each comprising an action performed by the user on or within one of the computer applications; a pattern determination module to identify patterns each comprising a sequence of two or more of the events, wherein each pattern occurs at a plurality of pattern occurrences; a pattern significance module to identify one or more of the patterns that are significant as representative of a task performed by the user, comprising: a distance module to determine a temporal distance between the events in each pattern occurrence for each pattern; a pattern value module to determine a pattern value for each pattern based on a number of the pattern occurrences and the associated temporal distances for the pattern occurrences; and a significance determination module to apply the pattern value to a significance level and determining that the one or more patterns are significant when the pattern value satisfies the significance level; a footprint module to assign a pattern weight to each significant pattern representative of the task, to generate a temporal footprint for the task comprising the significant patterns, which are each representative of the task and wherein the significant patterns with the higher weights are more distinct to the task; and a processor to execute the modules.