US 8,572,139 B2 · Desktop, stream-based, information management system

Abstract

A steam-based document storage and retrieval system accepts documents that are in diverse formats and come from diverse application, automatically creates document model objects describing these documents in a consistent format and associating time stamps with the documents to automatically create a main stream in chronological order. The stream, or sub-streams meeting selected search criteria, are displayed in a variety of forms, including a receding, partly overlapping stack with aids that facilitate user interaction.

A method of operating a computer system comprising:

providing the computer system with documents in respective formats according to respective different applications through which the documents are generated or modified, which formats differ from one of the document to another for at least some of the documents, said documents being delivered to the computer system or generated by the computer system;
storing at least some of the documents provided to the computer system in computer storage;
said computer system being configured to automatically generate and store in computer storage respective representations related to the documents, thereby forming a main collection of document representations;
said computer automatically generating and storing said main collection of document representations without requiring a user to designate for each of the documents or representations a directory structure, a physical location for storage of representations or of corresponding documents, or another pre-imposed document categorization structure;
said automatically generated and stored document representations being in a consistent format despite differences in format from one to another of the documents corresponding thereto;
said automatically generated and stored representations including respective automatically generated time indicators associated with the documents corresponding to said representations;
said automatically generated and stored representations further including respective automatically generated information relating the representation to the respective documents;
said automatically generated and stored main collection of representations being unbounded in time and size and being configured to provide for the inclusion of representation associated with time indicators related to future times as well as to past and present times;
said automatically generated and stored main collection of representations being in non-transitory form and being selectively searchable by the computer system;
providing selected search criteria;
causing said computer system to perform a first search of at least said main collection of representations according to selected first search criteria, to provide first search results, and to utilize said first search results to generate a first sub-collection of representations related to a respective sub-collection of the documents;
selectively causing the computer system to display on a screen graphical depictions of only a first portion of said first sub-collection of representations generated by utilizing said first search results;
said first portion comprising less than all of the representation in said first sub-collection of representations, and corresponding to a multi-document portion of said documents;
said computer system being configured to maintain at least one of said the main collection of representations and said first sub-collection of documents automatically responsive to events subsequent to the providing of said first search results such that additional representations corresponding to additional documents provided to or by the computer system subsequent to an initial display of said first portion of the first sub-collection of representations and meeting said selected search criteria are automatically included in a subsequent display of graphical depictions of one or more portions of said first sub-collection of document representations;
said additional document representations also including automatically generated respective time indicators associated with the documents subsequently provided to or by the computer system;
automatically showing on the screen a display of a glance view of a displayed document depiction while continuing to show on the screen plural displayed graphical depictions of respective plural representations;
said glance view being an abbreviated or truncated version of the document corresponding to the graphical depiction and being indicative of content thereof;
and
said showing of the glance view occurring in response to a user designating a displayed representation by interacting with a screen area currently associated with the graphical depiction.

16 more elements

Desktop, stream-based, information management system

Life of this patent

Desktop, stream-based, information management system

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims25