Patent ID: 6925454

Claim:
A computer implemented method for categorizing incoming electronic communications using a supervised machine learning component, and for factoring an organization's business domain into the technology domain to enable an acceptable automated response and routing scheme, said method comprising the steps of: (a) analyzing the business domain; (b) determining an approach to machine learning using a program or an algorithm for inducing a categorizer using supervised learning, the categorizer being generated from training data comprising a set of examples of the type of electronic communications to be classified; (c) collecting existing data of representative examples of electronic communications and inventories of personnel skills, business processes, workflows, and business missions; (d) Analyzing the collected data for determining one or more attributes of said electronic communications selected from the group consisting of complexity, vagueness, and uniqueness to be expected in the type of communications to be categorized, as well as the relative numbers of electronic communications having a particular attribute of said one or more attributes, and for determining a technical structure of the communications relevant to categorization, and factoring the inventories of personnel skills, business processes, workflows, and business missions collected to determine what must be done with each electronic communication, and by whom; (e) defining a categorization scheme; (f) labeling examples of electronic communications with categories from the categorization scheme for use both as training data to be used in the supervised learning step and as test data; (g) converting, using a computer, the labeled examples into a form suitable for subsequent processing, both for purposes of machine learning and technical validation; (h) performing using said computer, machine based supervised learning technology to induce said categorizer for the categorization scheme; and (i) validating the categorization scheme with respect to technical performance and business requirements.