† vanderbilt university nashville, tn

Automated Context-Sensitive Dialog Synthesis for Enterprise

WorkflowsUsing Templatized Model

Transformations

† Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN

Amogh Kavimandan†

[email protected]

Reinhard Klemm‡

[email protected]

Aniruddha Gokhale†

[email protected]

‡ Avaya Labs Research, Basking Ridge, NJ

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Enterprise Workflows

• Large enterprises increasingly automate business processes through workflows

• Supply chain management

• Production

• Shipping

• Billing

• HR

• Customer service

3

Advantages of Automation

• Faster• More precise, fewer errors• Less tedious, manual work• Requires fewer people, thus cheaper• Scalable: fast output variations without requiring linear

human resource variations (hiring, reassignment, termination)

• Repeatable because processes are codified• Codified processes can be more easily optimized• Audit trail

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Automating Communication Processes

• Human “impedance”• Workflows convey information to human decision makers in the

enterprise

• Enterprise workers communicate, collaborate about information from workflows

• Enterprise workers feed decisions, parameters back to workflows

• Information flow between workflows and enterprise workers and between enterprise workers traditionally slows down workflows tremendously

• Solution: automate communication processes with/between humans through workflows

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Communications Middleware and Dialogs

• Communications workflows• Designed on, executed on communications middleware

• Set up communications with and between users

• Voice, video, email, IM, SMS,…

• Dialogs• Interface between communications workflows and users

• Convey information from workflows to users

• Allow users to feed decisions, parameters, content back to workflows

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Challenges for Middleware and Workflows

• Users are not static entities!• Who (to communicate with or connect with each other)?

• When?

• Through which endpoints?

• Through which communication media?

• In which languages?

• …

• Our solution approach• Context-awareness in middleware to automate communications

decisions where possible and reasonable

• Presence on endpoints, capabilities of endpoints, (un)availability settings, location, current activities, corporate/personal rules, user skills/expertise, handicaps, spoken languages, etc.

• In all other cases, ask users through dialogs about their availability, interruptibility, reachability, skills/expertise, preferences, etc.

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Challenges for Dialogs

• Context-sensitive communications workflow decisions (who, when, where, how, …) are made dynamically

• Enterprise users employ a large, constantly changing set of communication endpoints and media

• Office phones, cell phones, IM clients, Web browsers, video clients, email clients, SMS, pagers, etc.

• … which means dialogs are best created dynamically• Need programmatic, customizable mappings from

workflow decision points to dialog instantiations on specific endpoints

Endpoint

RecipientContentMedium

Context-Sensitive, Dynamic

Dialog Generation

Content + Context

Parameters

Context-

Sensitive Dialog

Dialog

Rendering

Rules

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Challenges for Context-Sensitive Dialogs

• Endpoints have widely varying static capabilities and dynamic characteristics

• Modality, processing power, input devices, output devices, battery level, connectivity, …

• … which means dialog formatting and rendering has to be tailored to static + dynamic endpoint characteristics

• Many dialogs do not just inform – but also collect feedback

• Response option definitions can vary from Yes/No buttons to freeform text input

• … which means dialogs have to be able to incorporate widely varying types of input forms over a given endpoint/communication medium

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Challenges for Context-Sensitive Dialogs

• Dialogs may have to contain/link to supporting content, e.g., case documents

• … which means the dialog creation has to consider the static/dynamic capabilities of the chosen endpoint to render the desired support content

• or select alternative ways for user to access support content

• Endpoints change rapidly!• … which means the dialog creation needs to adjust to

the endpoint evolution with relatively minor changes

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The Good News…

• Despite the potential variabilities in dialogs, they also share many commonalities

• Product line architectures (PLAs) and provides a precedent for solving our challenges

• … giving us the opportunity to synthesize families of context-sensitive dialog

• by employing customizable and reusable software patterns and artifacts so

• … rather than either

• statically building context-insensitive dialogs or

• creating ad-hoc programmatic mappings from workflow decision points+user context to endpoint-specific dialogs

• and changing these mappings at a high cost when the endpoints change

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• Model Transformation & template Specialization (MTS) :

• Decouples variations in communication dialogs (for individual endpoints) from the transformation

– These variations are later used to instantiate endpoint-specific mappings

• Extends existing modeling and model transformation toolchains without incurring additional overhead

Templatized Model Transformation

Endpoint-specific variations in dialogs are provided as arguments to transformation

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inst

ance

of

Transformation Developer

Model Transformation Toolchain

Source Meta-model

Composition Paradigm3

Source Model

Target Model




Semantic Mapping Rules

G G’

G G’ G G’ G G’

G G’

G G’

G G’pattern

construction

Patte

rn

cons

tructi

on

Target Meta-model





inst

ance

of

VarML

auto-generated

Composition Variability Model

instanceof

specifies

develops

• Development of templatized transformation stages

• Developers specify constraints notation blocks in transformation rules to identify points of configuration variability

• Transformation instance-specific variability modeling language (VMM) is

• Variability models used for instantiating endpoint-specific transformation mappings

– Similar to C++ class templates

auto-generated – useful for capturing variabilities


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• Constraint notation blocks can be used to identify the following variabilities:

• Direct Assignments of target language objects

• Conditional Mappings of target language objects from some source objects (both compositional and qualitative variabilities)

• Sequencing block specifies locations in transformation project where variability would be accommodated

• Opaque to transformation engine and does not interfere with its translation logic

Constraint notation blocks inserted as special comments in transformation project


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• General purpose transformations auto-generate VMM from source, target languages and transformation variability points

• VMM can be used to specify transformation instance-specific variabilities

• Variabilities are expressed as name-value pairs (direct assignments) or associations (conditional mappings)

– Variability is in model as opposed to transformation rule!

Transformation Algorithm Variability Points

Name-value pairs

Source-target value pairs

Source-target creation pairs

VarML Associations

-value : object

targetObjectName

-value : object

sourceObjectName

-value : object

targetObjectName

sourceObjectName targetObjectName

1..* 1..*

1..* 1..*

Transformation Developer

Meta Modeling Environment

Model Transformations for Variability Meta-model Composition

Variabillity Model

VarML

Transformation Project

G G’


G G’

G G’

G G’

Target Meta-model





Source Meta-model





Object Type Information

develops

specifies

inst

an

ceo

f


VMM Associations

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Transformation Project

VarML ModelinObject

srcobjValue

outObject

trgtobjValue

G G’


G G’

G G’

G G’

Rule2 Rule3

G G’

currentBlock

New rule to accommodate variability

sequencing{ currentBlock:Rule2}direct{ … … }conditional_value{ … srcObjValue:trgtObjValue …}conditional_creation{ … …}

if inObject.srcobjValue () == srcobjValuea

then outObject.objValue () = trgtobjValuez;else if inObject.objValue () == srcobjValueb

then outObject.obValue () = trgtobjValuey;…...

• Finally, transformation variabilities incorporated in transformation algorithms

• Uses a higher-order transformation to construct/modify rules

• Endpoint-specific VMM models used to instantiate their communication dialogs


MTS can be downloaded from http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/CoSMIC

More information can be found at http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~amoghk

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Questions?

† vanderbilt university nashville, tn

Documents

communications decisions

capabilities of endpoints

set of communication

communications middlewareset

dialog instantiations

im clients

video clients

email clients