Patent ID: 7890442

Claim:
A method embodied in a computer system for autocompletion of fields in electronic forms, comprising: building an inference network based on form field values previously entered by multiple users into multiple form fields contained in previously completed instances of at least one electronic form template, wherein a plurality of nodes in said inference network represent corresponding ones of a plurality of form fields in said at least one electronic form template, and wherein at least one node in said inference network corresponds to at least one ambient variable representing a current condition external to said values previously entered into said multiple form fields; evaluating said inference network in response to a current user filling out a current form field in a current instance of said electronic form template, and wherein said evaluating said inference network is responsive to at least one value previously entered by said current user into at least one preceding form field in said current instance of said electronic form template and to a current value of said ambient variable, wherein said evaluating said inference network determines at least one posterior probability for a possible value associated with an unfilled form field in said current instance of said electronic form template; and presenting, through a display device of said computer system, responsive to said posterior probability, a recommended value to said current user such that said recommended value can be selected by said current user to fill in said unfilled form field in said current instance of said electronic form template.