Learning Information Intent via Observation
http://www2007.org/papers/paper586.pdf

Tomasic, Anthony, Isaac Simmons and John Zimmerman
WWW 2007
2007

Abstract:

Workers in organizations frequently request help from assistants by sending request messages that express information intent: an intention to update data in an information system. Human assistants spend a significant amount of time and effort processing these requests. For example, human-resource assistants process requests to update personnel records, and executive assistants process requests to schedule conference rooms or to make travel reservations. To process the intent of a request, an assistant reads the request and then locates, completes, and submits a form that corresponds to the expressed intent. Automatically or semi-automatically processing the intent expressed in a request on behalf of an assistant would ease the mundane and repetitive nature of this kind of work.