Patent ID: 7171448

Claim:
A method for conducting activities between users in a collaborative work tool architecture comprising the steps of: (a) affording a client user interface including at least one activity data field wherein the interface is operably coupled to a collaborative work environment having collaborative applications integrated with agents at the client, wherein the agents are intermediaries between the users and the applications; (b) automatically acquiring background information relevant to the at least one activity data field, wherein the at least one activity data field includes descriptive text and an activity start time, and wherein automatically acquiring background information includes automatically obtaining the descriptive text when the start time is within a predetermined period, parsing and pattern matching the descriptive text to identify searchable components of the descriptive text querying a plurality of sources across a network to obtain the background information, and storing the background information that is retrieved in response to querying the plurality of sources; (c) receiving a selection of a particular activity data field from a user; (d) presenting additional information on the selected activity field using the client user interface, wherein the additional information includes the background information; (e) allowing the user to input meeting data concerning the selected activity data field; (f) storing the meeting data on a server via the network; and (g) allowing a plurality of participant users access to the stored meeting data via the network.