Patent Document ID: 8346879
Application ID: 12794212

Base Claim:
1. An electronic out-of-office message analysis method comprising: receiving an electronic out-of-office message generated by a user in a natural language, the electronic out-of-office message including a time window of absence and an alternate named contact; with a computer processor, generating a normalized representation of the time window by identifying and normalizing a temporal expression from text content of the user's out-of-office message and identifying the alternate named contact by recognizing named entities from the text content of the user's out-of-office message and cross-referencing the recognized named entities with a named entity directory for identifying an alternate named contact corresponding to one of the recognized named entities; generating a structured representation of the user's out-of-office message, the structured representation including a reference to the user, a reference to the identified alternate named contact, and the normalized representation of the time window; using a database that stores structured representations of out-of-office messages of other users, determining whether the user's out-of-office message conflicts with an out-of-office message of the identified alternate named contact by comparing the normalized representation of the time window included in the structured representation of the user's out-of-office message with a normalized representation of a time window included in a structured representation of the identified alternate named contact's out-of-office message; and if a conflict is detected, notifying the user of the conflict.

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Claim 5:
5. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the conflict comprises a cascade of out-of-office messages when the structured representation of the identified alternate named contact's out-of-office message expresses another user as an alternate contact during an overlapping time window.