Discovering questions, directives, and requests from, and prioritizing replies to, a preferred message sender method and apparatus

Abstract

When a message contains an actionable request or question the invention measures a time til transmitted reply (TTTR). Replies which contain substantive answers such as dates, decisions, quantities, concurrence, or content are paired with their respective request for each sender-recipient directed dyad. The replies are categorized to the type of action taken in response to the request. The history of each dyad is examined to determine the relative importance each party ascribes to the other and a range of typical TTTR is stored. Questions, directives, and requests are discovered in a message by scanning for deadline words, calendar words, time words, urgency phrases, question words such as who what when, capability syntax, and agreement/disagreement alternatives. A user receives an alert when a response is nearly past a deadline or close to exceeding expected time to reply, immediately upon receipt, or both. An alert offers a potential response.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.