A method of constructing an entity profile, having private and public portions with different access restrictions, commences with the assignment of a confidence level to content within an electronic document. The electronic document may be associated with the first entity (e.g., may have been authored by or addressed to the first entity). The content may furthermore potentially be descriptive of the first entity. If the confidence level assigned to the content is less than a predetermined threshold, the content is automatically rejected for inclusion within the entity profile. On the other hand, if the confidence level assigned to the content exceeds the predetermined threshold, the content is included within the private portion of the entity profile. Thereafter, the content is automatically presented to the first entity for authorization, by the first entity, for inclusion of the content within the public portion of the profile. The public portion of the entity profile may be freely accessible by other entities, whereas the private portion may have access restrictions.

Method and apparatus for constructing and maintaining a user knowledge profile

A method of constructing a profile comprising terms indicative of a characteristic of an entity commences when first electronic mail address, associated with a first entity, is created within a knowledge management system. The electronic mail address may be created automatically upon submission of an electronic mail document, or may be created manually by a systems administrator. A first electronic document is received via an electronic communications network at the first electronic mail address from a second entity, typically a user of the knowledge management system who is a registered and interactive user. The first electronic document is then parsed to identify profile terms therein. These profile terms are included within a first profile for the first entity. In this way, users of a knowledge management system may construct a profile of an entity (e.g., a customer) that is not a user of or participant within the knowledge management system.

Method of constructing and displaying an entity profile constructed utilizing input from entities other than the owner

A method of constructing a user knowledge profile, having distinct public and private portions with different access restrictions, requires assigning a confidence level to content within an electronic document. The electronic document is associated with a user, such as for example the author of the document. The content may be potentially indicative of a knowledge base of the user. The content is then stored in either the public or private portion of the user knowledge profile dependent upon whether the confidence level exceeds, or falls below, a predetermined threshold level. The public portion of the user knowledge profile is freely accessible by third parties, whereas the private portion has restricted access.

Method and system for constructing a knowledge profile of a user having unrestricted and restricted access portions according to respective levels of confidence of content of the portions

A method of assigning a confidence level to a term within an electronic document, such as an e-mail, includes the step of firstly determining a quantitative indicator in the exemplary form of an occurrence value, based on the number of occurrences of a particular term within an electronic document, and associating the occurrence term within the relevant term. Thereafter, a qualitative indicator, based on a quality of the term, is determined. For example, the qualitative indicator may be determined utilizing the parts of speech of words comprising the term. A confidence level value, which may be utilized to indicate a relative importance of the term in describing a user knowledge base, is then generated utilizing the quantitative and qualitative indicators.

Method and apparatus for assigning a confidence level to a term within a user knowledge profile

A method of authorizing a user profile access request includes the step of detecting the access request from an inquiring user to access a user profile of a target user. Responsive to the detected access request, an authorization request is automatically generated and sent to the target user. In response to the authorization request, the target user may then authorize access to his or her user profile by the inquiring user. Of course, the target user may also decline access to the relevant user profile.

Method and apparatus for managing user profiles including identifying users based on matched query term

The collection, organization, retrieval and interpretation of knowledge and information are not only important to an organization's success but vital to its survival. This paper deals with the knowledge conversion within/between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge in new product development. Based on the framework of NII services, an Internet service for knowledge discovery and sharing, is proposed in the context of their on-going development of an information system for knowledge amplification.

Knowledge discovery and sharing in an information system

Based on an analysis of Sony's practice, the core of innovation in product development is viewed in the paper as knowledge amplification, which depends on an iterative exploration cycle and information emergence through the cycle by capturing both articulable and tacit knowledge An information system for knowledge amplification in the virtual enterprise is proposed, which includes a symbiotic network for information capturing and sharing through the WWW and multimedia email; an integrated product data manager for creation, evaluation, decision and archiving; an activity scheduler for workflow coordination, and an object-oriented database as shared information server for product, process and organization data

Bangyu Lei

Papers

Knowledge discovery and sharing in an information system

Information management for knowledge amplification in virtual enterprise