JP2007072523A - Program, method and device for supporting formation of cooperative work area - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To estimate a member candidate corresponding to a human network which does not explicitly appear in a message such as e-mail in a device for forming a cooperation work area using the message as a material. <P>SOLUTION: A mail group input unit 30 acquires one or more e-mails as the material from an instructor. A work area information extraction unit 40 extracts transmitters and receivers of the e-mails as basic member candidates, compares the basic member candidates with members of each cooperative work area of a cooperative work area DB 10, and extracts cooperative work area having member structures having high commonality with the basic member candidates. The extracted cooperative work area are further refined based on the similarity between message contents of the e-mails and a message registered in each cooperative work area or the like to determine a candidate cooperative work area. Among members belonging to the candidate cooperative work area, persons other than the basic member candidates are determined as additional member candidates. A cooperative work area forming unit 50 forms a new cooperative work area having the basic member candidates and the additional member candidates as members. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a technology for supporting creation of a new collaborative work place for a collaborative work place management apparatus that manages an electronic collaborative work place for members to exchange information.

  In order to share information between users and perform business using the same, use of an electronic collaborative work place such as an electronic bulletin board or a workflow system is progressing. As an electronic collaborative work place, for example, Patent Document 1 is known.

  Conventionally, it is often performed that an electronic collaborative work place is created in advance as a given one and a user participates in the place to exchange information. However, since communication between users also has spontaneous and natural growth aspects, there is a demand to create an electronic collaborative workplace that is used by the community that communicates after communication is activated.

  Conventionally, as a technique for creating a community from a communication history by e-mail that has started spontaneously, there is a technique disclosed in Patent Document 2. In this technology, the target e-mail message is compared with the existing message set, and if the target message is related to the existing message set, the target message is included in the existing message set, and the target message is set to the existing message set. If there is no relationship with any of the above, a new message set (community) including the target message is created.

  In the prior art of Patent Document 2, the members constituting the message set are only the sender and receiver of the messages included in the set. However, when a new electronic collaborative work place is created based on the contents of the message set, it is a natural development that other than the sender and the receiver will participate in the collaborative work place. It is not efficient if the administrator registers such participants other than the sender and receiver. If a person who is likely to participate in a collaborative workplace newly created from a message is likely to participate in addition to the sender and receiver of the message, such a person can be determined as a candidate for the participant. And often convenient.

  Further, Patent Document 3 shows a mechanism for forming a community with persons registered in the mailing list as community member candidates, inquiring those candidates about their intention to participate in the community, and those who have indicated their intention to participate as members.

  However, in the mechanism of Patent Document 3, only a person registered in the mailing list becomes a member candidate.

  Also, Patent Document 4 discloses a system that, when content to be discussed is set, collects users who send information that matches the content as candidates for participation in discussion and calls for participation in discussion. Is done.

  However, in the mechanism of Patent Document 4, only those who send information that matches the content to be discussed are selected as candidates. From the viewpoint of information sharing, it is very important not only to speak, but also to spread the information by viewing the remarks by other people. From this point of view, it is not enough to simply select only the speaker. is there.

JP 2000-105748 A JP 2004-110814 A Japanese Patent No. 3573038 Japanese Patent No. 2980167

  The present invention makes it possible to infer member candidates corresponding to human connections that do not appear explicitly in an inter-user message in an apparatus for creating a new collaborative workplace using inter-user messages such as e-mail.

  In one aspect of the present invention, as a collaborative work place creation support device for creating and registering a new collaborative work place with respect to a collaborative work place management device for managing an electronic collaborative work place for members to exchange information, A program for causing a computer to function, and for creating a new collaborative work place, a message between users selected according to a selection condition directly selected by the instructor or designated by the instructor. Based on the comparison between the predetermined information related to the acquired inter-user message and the predetermined information related to each collaborative work place managed by the collaborative work place management device. New member cooperation that extracts member candidates and includes the member candidates or those selected from those member candidates as participating members Registering the Gojo the cooperative workplace management device provides a program, for executing the process.

  In another aspect of the present invention, a collaborative work place creation executed by a computer to create and register a new collaborative work place for a collaborative work place management apparatus that manages an electronic collaborative work place for members to exchange information. A user method that is a support method that acquires a user-to-user message that is directly selected from an instructor or selected according to a selection condition designated by the instructor as a determination material for creating a new collaborative work place. Based on the comparison between the predetermined information related to the inter-message and the predetermined information related to each cooperative work place managed by the collaborative work place management device, the member candidate of the new collaborative work place is extracted, the member candidate, Or registering a new collaborative workshop including those selected from the member candidates as participating members in the collaborative workshop management device. Cooperative workplace creation support method to be, to provide.

  In yet another aspect, a collaborative work place creation support device for creating and registering a new collaborative work place for a collaborative work place management device for managing an electronic collaborative work place for members to exchange information. A means for acquiring an inter-user message selected directly according to a selection condition specified by an instructor or designated by an instructor as a determination material for creating a new collaborative work place, and related to the acquired inter-user message Based on a comparison between predetermined information and predetermined information related to each collaborative work place managed by the collaborative work place management device, means for extracting member candidates of the new collaborative work place, the member candidates, or those members Means for registering a new collaborative work place including a person selected from the candidates as a participating member in the collaborative work place management device. If creating support device, to provide.

  DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the invention (hereinafter referred to as “embodiments”) will be described with reference to the drawings.

  With reference to FIG. 1, the structure for the collaborative work place creation support according to the present invention will be described. In this embodiment, one typical example is application to a system that electronically realizes cooperative work involving information exchange among organizational members in an organization such as a company.

  In FIG. 1, a collaborative work place DB (database) 10 is a database for storing information on an electronic collaborative work place. A plurality of collaborative workplaces can be registered in the collaborative workplace DB 10. The collaborative work place DB 10 includes information (participant information) of participants who participate in the collaborative work place for each individual collaborative work place, an electronic bulletin board for the participants to exchange information, and various applications shared between the participants. Holds a shared file management unit that manages files. The user information includes information such as the name and e-mail address of each participant. Participants in the collaborative workshop are a plurality of leaders or chairpersons who manage discussions and information exchanges at the workshops, members who participate in discussions and information exchanges, and observers who only view the state of discussions and information exchanges. It is divided into roles, and the user information includes information on the roles of the participants in the cooperative work place. In the following, when there is no need to distinguish roles, a leader, a member, and an observer are collectively referred to as a member. Also, the collaborative work site DB 10 stores a record of each participant's operations on the electronic bulletin board and the shared file storage, for example, operations such as posting / uploading, browsing / downloading articles and files.

  The collaborative work place management device 20 is a device for processing various operations from the user for the collaborative work place held in the collaborative work place DB 10. For example, the collaborative workplace management apparatus 20 displays a message browsing screen registered in an existing collaborative workplace, registration and download of messages and files, a screen for registering and deleting participants in the existing collaborative workplace, and deletion Various user interface screens such as a screen for registration and a screen for registering or deleting a collaborative work place with respect to the collaborative work place DB 10 are provided to the user, and processing corresponding to the operation contents of the user on these screens is executed. The collaborative workplace management apparatus 20 provides these user interface screens to each client apparatus existing on a network such as the Internet in the form of a web page, for example.

  In the illustrated example, the function for the collaborative work place creation support of the present embodiment is incorporated as an internal function of the collaborative work place management apparatus 20. The function for the collaborative work place creation support includes a mail group designator 30, a work place information extractor 40, and a collaborative work place creator 50. Portions other than the function for collaborative work place creation support in the collaborative work place management apparatus 20 may be equivalent to the collaborative work support apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 1. Further, the information managed by the collaborative work place DB 10 may include information as shown in Patent Document 1 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-092347 in addition to those exemplified above. The functions for collaborative work place creation support will be described below.

  In this embodiment, as an example, an e-mail is used as a raw material for creating a new cooperative work place. E-mail is widely and casually used for communication between users, and can be expected to function effectively as a tray for spontaneous communication. Therefore, in this embodiment, a new cooperative work place is created using one or more e-mails selected from such e-mails.

  The mail group input device 30 accepts the input of one or more e-mails that are the raw materials of such a new collaborative work place from the instructor who instructed the creation of the collaborative work place. This e-mail can be input as follows, for example. For example, a creation screen of a collaborative work place (referred to as “task” in the figure) as shown in FIG. 2 is provided as a web page 100 from the collaborative work place management device 20 to the client device operated by the instructor. On the other hand, the instructor selects one or more e-mails as raw materials on the UI (user interface) screen 110 of the mail client on the client device (the mail group in the reverse display portion 112 indicates the selected mail). ) The mail group is input to the raw material input area of the web page 100 displayed on the browser screen of the client device by the drag and drop operation of the pointing device. Thereby, the information (including both the header and the body) of each selected electronic mail is passed to the browser. When the instructor clicks the creation instruction button 104, the information is sent to the mail input group input device 30 by HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). The mail group input device 30 passes the received one or more e-mail data to the workplace information extractor 40.

  The work place information extractor 40 extracts information on various setting items that define a new collaborative work place from the received e-mail data, registration information in the collaborative work place DB 10, and registration information in the address information DB 60. In the address information DB 60, the first and last name and e-mail address of each user registered in the collaborative work place management apparatus 20, the role of each user in the organization (for example, the department to which the user belongs, the position, etc.), and the roles are configured. Information related to the hierarchy to be registered is registered. Information on the setting items to be extracted includes, for example, new collaborative workshop member candidates, the role of each member candidate in the collaborative workshop, and the location of the collaborative workshop in the existing collaborative workshop group (in other words, Relationship with existing collaborative workshops). The member candidate extractor 42, the member role determiner 44, and the collaborative work place destination determiner 46 are in charge of extracting information on each item. The method for extracting / determining the information of each item will be described in detail later.

  The collaborative work place creator 50 creates a new collaborative work place based on the information of each setting item extracted by the work place information extractor 40 and registers it in the collaborative work place DB 10. Here, when a new collaborative work place is registered, it is beneficial to promote the use of the collaborative work place by notifying each participant that the collaborative work place has been established. Also, when a collaborative workshop is created from an email, the information of the email is known among those who exchanged the email, but the content of the email is unknown to other participants. It is. Therefore, in some cases, it is better to inform the participants of the contents of these e-mails as preliminary knowledge of the established cooperative workshop. For this reason, the collaborative work place creation device 50 is a mail destination determination device as a module for sending an e-mail notifying the opening of the newly registered collaborative work place to the participants and mail information as preliminary knowledge. 52 and a mail transmitter 54. The mail transmission destination determination unit 52 is a functional module that determines which electronic mail is transmitted to which participant, and the detailed function thereof will be described later. The mail transmitter 54 creates an electronic mail to be transmitted and transmits it to each destination via a mail server connected to the collaborative work place management apparatus 20.

  Next, a procedure for creating a collaborative work place by the collaborative work place creation support mechanism of the present embodiment will be described with reference to FIG.

  In this procedure, first, one or more e-mails as raw materials are acquired from the instructor (S1). The member candidate extractor 42 that has received the one or more e-mails first extracts the sender and the recipient (including the destination of “cc” (carbon copy)) from the headers of the one or more e-mails (S2). ). These extracted senders and receivers become basic member candidates (called basic member candidates) of a new collaborative work place to be created.

  Next, the member candidate extractor 42 extracts additional member candidates based on the one or more e-mails acquired in S1 and information on each cooperative work place registered in the collaborative work place DB 10 (S3). The process of S3 will be described using the specific examples of FIGS.

  FIG. 4 shows basic information obtained from the e-mail group 200 acquired in S1. In this example, a basic member candidate 202 corresponding to either a sender or a receiver, the message content 204 of the email group 200, and the period during which the email group 200 was exchanged from the acquired email group 200. 206 is demanded. The message content 204 can be obtained by performing a natural language analysis technique, for example, summarization processing or keyword extraction processing, on the title and / or the body of each electronic mail acquired in S1. In the figure, “collaboration” (collaboration) is given as an example of the message content 204, but this is only an example for simplifying the explanation. Actually, the message content 204 is a feature vector indicating the characteristics of the contents of the electronic mail group obtained by the existing summary processing or keyword extraction processing. As the feature vector, for example, there is a keyword vector whose element is the appearance frequency of each keyword appearing in the electronic mail group. Further, the distribution period of one or more e-mail transmission dates and times (that is, a period from the earliest e-mail transmission date and time to the latest e-mail transmission date and time) can be set as the e-mail exchange period 206.

  FIG. 5 shows an example of information on a collaborative work place registered in the collaborative work place DB 10 to be compared with the information acquired from the electronic mail group 200. In this example, each cooperative work place (task) is identified by a task ID (identification information). Corresponding to this task ID, the user IDs of the participants in the cooperative workshop are registered separately for each role of the leader, member, and observer, and the activity period of the cooperative workshop is registered. The beginning of the activity period is basically the time when the collaborative workshop is registered. The end is when the leader instructs the cooperative work place management device 20 to stop the activity of the collaborative work place, but the end can be registered or changed in advance. In any case, the information on the next stage of the activity is managed so that the information of the remaining collaborative workshops can be understood. Information exchange at a collaborative workshop is typically performed in the form of message registration and browsing on the electronic bulletin board, and these registered messages are coordinated in a general electronic bulletin board message management data structure such as thread format. It is stored in the workplace DB 10. The “message content” in the table shown in FIG. 5 is information indicating the characteristics of the message in such a collaborative workshop, and a typical example is a keyword vector of a message registered in the electronic bulletin board of the collaborative workshop. . The “message content” of each collaborative workplace may be obtained dynamically after receiving a request to create a new collaborative workplace, but is periodically obtained, for example, every day, and is registered in the collaborative workplace DB 10. You may make it refer to it.

  The member candidate extractor 42 obtains a collaborative workshop close to the email group as a candidate collaborative workshop by comparing the basic information obtained from the email group 200 and the information of each collaborative workshop registered in the collaborative workshop DB 10. Of the members (more specifically, leaders, members, and observers) belonging to the candidate collaborative workplace, those who are not included in the basic member candidates are extracted as additional member candidates.

  The similarity between the e-mail group 200 and the collaborative workplace is comprehensively determined from various aspects such as the human aspect, the information content aspect, and the activity period aspect. In the human aspect, the commonality of the participants between the e-mail group 200 and the collaborative work place, and in the information content aspect, the commonality of the message contents between the e-mail group 200 and the collaborative work place, In the aspect, the commonality of message exchange periods between the electronic mail group 200 and the collaborative work place is used as an index for determining similarity.

  The extraction of additional member candidates based on the similarity between the email group 200 and the collaborative work place is based on the following idea. In other words, both spontaneous communication by e-mail and communication at a collaborative work place are related to each other in the same business, and may be related to each other. For example, when discussing a topic that deviates slightly from the theme of an existing collaborative workshop, the existing collaborative workshop does not discuss due to a difference in the theme, and instead, e-mail is sent between members of the existing collaborative workshop and similar members. It's a common scenario to say in the discussion. In such a case, members of an existing collaborative workshop that are similar to the email group 200 in terms of human and information content are likely to have a relationship with respect to the theme of the email group 200, and the electronic It can be said that the possibility of becoming a member of a collaborative work place newly created from the mail group 200 is high. Therefore, in the present embodiment, a candidate for additional members of a newly created collaborative work place is extracted from existing collaborative work place members that are similar in human and information content to the discussion / information exchange represented by the email group 200. . A specific example of this processing will be described with reference to FIG.

  In the example of FIG. 6, first, (1) from among the seven collaborative workplaces shown in FIG. 5, those with a high degree of overlap between the basic member candidates 202 and the members of the e-mail group 200 shown in FIG. 4 are extracted. . In this example, a collaborative workplace including 75% (3/4) of the basic member candidates 202 as members (regardless of role) is extracted. As a result, five collaborative workplaces with task IDs 1 to 4 and 7 are extracted. In this example, a collaborative work place that includes a predetermined proportion or more of the senders and receivers of the email group 200 as members is extracted. The additional member candidates shown in the table of FIG. 5 are the rest of the collaborative workplaces excluding the basic member candidates 202.

  In this example, the collaborative workplace where the overlapping degree of members is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold (75% in this example) is extracted, but such a narrowing condition is only an example. In addition to this, there may be a condition such as extracting a collaborative work place having a degree of overlap from the top to a predetermined order.

  Next, (2) from the collaborative workplaces extracted, those having a high degree of activity period overlapping with the communication period 206 of the email group 200 are extracted. In the illustrated example, a collaborative workplace having an activity period that completely includes the communication period 206 is extracted, but this is only an example. It is also possible to use an extraction condition of extracting an activity period that includes a predetermined ratio (this threshold is registered in advance) of the communication period 206 or more.

  The reason why the collaborative work place having an activity period with a high degree of overlap with the communication period 206 of the e-mail group 200 is extracted is that the business content of each member constituting the organization changes with time. Even if member candidates are extracted from a collaborative workplace that has a different timing from the target email group 200, the member candidates are not appropriate member candidates, such as performing different tasks during the exchange period of the email group 200. Is likely to be extracted. By limiting to the collaborative work place almost at the same time as the e-mail group 200, it is possible to select an appropriate member candidate considering simultaneity.

  By narrowing down according to such an activity period, in the example of FIG. 6, the cooperative workshops with task IDs 1, 3 and 4 and additional member candidates belonging to it are extracted. In the present embodiment, the extraction result is further narrowed down based on the similarity of message contents. That is, from the collaborative workplaces with task IDs 1, 3 and 4, those whose message content features are similar to the message content features of the email group 200 are extracted. For example, when a keyword vector is used as a feature of the message content, in this extraction process, the keyword vector is regarded as a position vector in the multidimensional space, and the degree of similarity according to the distance between points in the multidimensional space indicated by the keyword vector ( The degree of similarity increases as the distance decreases, and a cooperative work place having a similarity equal to or higher than a predetermined threshold with respect to the keyword vector of the email group 200 is extracted. In the example of FIG. 6, a collaborative work place with a task ID of 4 is extracted. This is the final candidate collaborative work place obtained by the extraction processing of the present embodiment, and the additional member candidate F belonging to the candidate collaborative work place (ID = 4) is finally a member candidate to be added to the basic member candidate 202. .

  In this example, the final candidate collaborative work place has been narrowed down to one. In such a case, all of the additional member candidates belonging to the plurality of candidate collaborative workplaces may be the final additional member candidates to be added to the basic member candidate 202.

  After the basic member candidates 202 and additional member candidates are determined in this way, a list of these basic member candidates 202 and additional member candidates is presented to the instructor, and unnecessary member candidates are deleted or missing member candidates are displayed. Additional instructions can also be received from the instructor.

  The procedure for extracting candidate collaborative workplaces and additional member candidates described above is merely an example. The application order of narrowing down based on the personal relationship (overlap of people), the relationship of information content (overlap of message content), and the temporal relationship (overlap of communication periods) is not limited to the order illustrated in FIG.

  In addition, for each of the overlap of people, the overlap of messages, and the overlap of communication periods, the degree of overlap is quantified (for example, the above-mentioned similarity may be used), and the value of the degree of overlap from these three viewpoints is determined in advance. By substituting into a predetermined function obtained through experiments, etc., the overall similarity between the email group and the existing collaborative workplace is obtained, and the similarity is the highest or the similarity is a threshold value. Existing workplaces that satisfy the above conditions may be extracted as candidate workplaces. Then, additional member candidates may be obtained from the extracted candidate workplace members.

  Further, it is not always necessary to perform all the narrowing down based on these three relationships. For example, a candidate collaborative workplace may be obtained using one of these three relationships, and additional member candidates may be extracted from members belonging to the candidate collaborative workplace.

  In the example of FIG. 6, a candidate cooperative work place that is closely related to the e-mail group 200 is identified from the relationship between the e-mail group 200 and the existing collaborative work place, and people other than the basic member candidates 202 belonging to the candidate collaborative work place are identified. It was to extract as additional member candidates. On the other hand, additional member candidates may be narrowed down based on criteria other than the relationship between the e-mail group 200 and the existing collaborative work place. An example is shown in FIG. Similarly to the example of FIG. 6, the example of FIG. 7 is based on the e-mail group 200 having the characteristics shown in FIG. 4 and the collaborative work place group shown in FIG.

  In the example of FIG. 7, (1) the place where the collaborative work place is first screened due to the overlap of people is the same as the example of FIG. 6, but (2) the remaining collaborative work place (ID = 1, 2, 3) thereafter. , 4, 7), the candidate member I having a low appearance level (number of appearances) is screened out. This filtering is performed, for example, on the condition that, for example, a person having an appearance degree equal to or less than ½ of the maximum appearance degree is cut off with respect to the appearance degree of each person in the group of collaborative workplaces remaining after the processing of (1). (This condition is registered in advance in the work place information extractor 40). In the subsequent processes (3) and (4), as in the case of FIG. 6, the final candidate collaborative workshop and additional member candidates are selected by narrowing down the collaborative workshops according to the relationship of time and information content. Has been identified. In the above, the additional member candidates are narrowed down after the narrowing down due to the overlap of people, but this is not essential. For example, the additional member candidates may be narrowed down after the narrowing down due to the overlapping of periods. Good. Further, additional member candidates may be narrowed down by conditions other than the appearance degree.

  Further, the member candidate extractor 42 uses the information in the address DB information 60 to identify persons who have a predetermined organizational relationship, such as a boss or a person belonging to the same group, with respect to the member candidates obtained as described above. It may be specified and such a person may be extracted as a further member candidate.

  Returning to the description of FIG. When the extraction of the basic member candidate 202 and the additional member candidate is completed as described above, the member role determination unit 44 then includes each of these member candidates in the new cooperative work place (including both the basic member candidate 202 and the additional member candidate). Is determined (S4). Several methods can be used to determine this role.

  One is a method of determining a role based on a transmission / reception relationship of the electronic mail group 200. For example, the person described in the “cc:” field of an e-mail is more likely to be in the e-mail when compared to the sender described in the “From:” field and the recipient described in the “To:” field. The degree of involvement in information exchange is small. For this reason, the person described in the “cc:” field is considered to have a strong observer element. Further, since the sender described in the “From:” field is a person who speaks actively in the communication by the electronic mail group 200, it is considered that a leader element is strong. The recipient described in the “To:” field can be considered as an intermediate between the two. For this reason, for example, “From:” is the highest score, “To:” is the next score, and “cc:” is the lowest score, and the user selects “From:”, “ When it appears in the field of “To:” or “cc:”, the score of the user is obtained by accumulating the score according to the field. The person with the highest total score is determined as the “leader”. Further, those who appear only in the “cc:” field in the e-mail group 200 are determined to be “observers”. The role of the remaining member candidates is “member”. This method is only an example. For example, “From:” and “To:” may have the same score. Also, instead of automatically selecting the highest scorer as the leader, a plurality of higher ranks are presented to the instructor as candidate leaders, and the instructor selects the final leader (one or more). You may do it.

  Another method for determining the role is to use information from existing collaborative workshops. When extracting additional member candidates, a candidate collaborative work place close to the e-mail group 200 was obtained. Based on the role of each member candidate in the candidate collaborative work place, the role of each member candidate in the new collaborative work place is determined. It is. For example, in the example of FIG. 6, a task candidate having a task ID of 4 is selected as the final candidate collaborative work place. In this candidate collaborative work place, as shown in FIG. 5, the user A is a leader, B, C, and F Are the members and D is the observer, the roles of the basic member candidates A, B, C, D, and the additional member candidate F are also determined to be the same.

  If there are multiple candidate collaborative workplaces finally extracted, for example, a score that becomes smaller in that order is determined for the leader, member, and observer, and the role of the member candidates in the plural candidate collaborative workplaces is determined for each member candidate. It is possible to calculate the total score by accumulating the corresponding scores, and to determine the role of the member candidate based on the total score or an index value such as an average score obtained by dividing the total score by the number of candidate cooperative workshops it can. For example, a method in which the person with the highest total score is the leader, the person whose average score is below a certain threshold value is the observer, and the other person is the member is of course possible (not limited to this).

  In addition to the candidate collaborative workshop finally extracted, a new collaborative workshop is provided by comprehensively evaluating the roles of each member candidate in the candidate collaborative workshop extracted in each stage of (1) to (4). The role of each member candidate may be determined. In this case, the points for determining the scores for each role are the same as those described above, but weighting is performed according to when the candidate collaborative workplace is extracted. The weight of the candidate collaborative workplace finally extracted is made the largest, and the weight is made smaller in the following steps. The role of each member candidate in a new collaborative work place is determined using the total score or the average score of each member candidate after weighting in this way.

  As yet another method for determining the role, a method using the relationship between member candidates in the organization is also conceivable. In other words, the address information DB 60 holds the hierarchical relationship on the organization of each member of the organization that uses the collaborative workplace management apparatus 20, and the information on the hierarchical relationship is stored in the new collaborative workplace. This is used to determine the role of each member candidate. For example, among the obtained basic member candidates and additional member candidates, a determination process may be considered in which the highest person in the hierarchical relationship of the organization is a leader and other persons are members.

  In the foregoing, the role determination method using each of the transmission / reception relationship of the email group 200, the role in the candidate cooperative work place, and the hierarchical relationship on the organization has been described. In the embodiment, only one of these may be used, or two or more may be used in combination. When combining two or more methods, for example, for each member candidate, score the role determination result in each method (use the score if you are seeking a score for the determination) The score is assigned to a predetermined function (for example, a function that performs weighting for each method and added) to obtain a comprehensive evaluation value, and the role of the member candidate in the new cooperative workshop is determined according to the comprehensive evaluation value. That's fine.

  In addition, when the basic member candidate and the additional member candidate are obtained, the collaborative work place arrangement determination unit 46 determines in which position the new collaborative work place to be created will be placed in the existing collaborative work place group. (S5). Hereinafter, this process will be described.

  A parent-child relationship or a derivation relationship is defined in the collaborative workplace registered in the collaborative workplace DB 10 of the present embodiment. This has the following advantages. In other words, when discussing and exchanging information at a certain collaborative workshop, it is often necessary to delve into the details of the theme of the collaborative workshop or discuss another theme that is close to it. In such a case, by deriving another collaborative workshop from the collaborative workshop, and discussing and exchanging details and other themes in that collaborative workshop, each collaborative workshop is organized by theme. It can cover a wide variety of themes while maintaining the same. Then, information on the derivation relationship can be referred from each cooperative workshop, or a link to the derivation destination is displayed in the derivation source cooperative workshop, or conversely, a link to the derivation source is displayed in the derivation destination cooperative workshop. By doing so, the user can easily find a desired cooperative work place. A collaborative workshop can also have multiple parents. Such a parent-child relationship of the collaborative work place is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-092347, so please refer to it.

  In step S5, the position of the newly created collaborative work place in the parent-child relationship of such a collaborative work place is determined, and a candidate for the placement position is obtained.

  In obtaining a candidate for a position to be occupied by a new collaborative work place to be generated in the parent-child relationship, the present embodiment uses the same processing as that for extracting additional member candidates. That is, an existing collaborative work place close to the original electronic mail group 200 is extracted as a candidate collaborative work place. The process for obtaining the candidate cooperative work place may be the same as the process described with reference to FIG. And the position which becomes a child of this candidate cooperation workshop or a brother is shown to a user as a candidate position.

  For example, it is assumed that the collaborative work place group in the collaborative work place DB 10 has a parent-child relationship 300 shown in FIG. 8 when an instruction to create a new collaborative work place is given. In this example, the collaborative work place “task 2” has the collaborative work place “task 7” as a child, and the collaborative work place “task 1” has the collaborative work places “task 3” and “task 4” as children.

  Here, when “task 4” is obtained as a candidate collaborative work place by the member candidate extractor 42 in the procedure as shown in FIG. 6, the collaborative work place placement destination determination unit 46 determines the positions of the children and siblings of “task 4”. Display images of the parent-child relationship 310 shown as candidate positions 312 and 314, respectively, are created, and this display image is provided to the client device as a web page, for example. When the instructor selects a desired candidate position 312 or 314 on this web page by clicking and the like, and transmits the selection result to the collaborative work place management apparatus 20 by the browser function, the collaborative work place placement destination determination unit 46 In accordance with the selection result, a new collaborative work place is determined. In addition, since a collaborative work place can have a plurality of parents, it is allowed to select a plurality of candidate positions.

  When a plurality of candidate collaborative workplaces are obtained, the collaborative workplace placement destination determination unit 46 presents the position of the child or sibling as the candidate location for each candidate collaborative workplace.

  In addition to or instead of the positions of the children and siblings of the candidate cooperative work place, the parent position may be presented as a candidate position.

  Also, instead of presenting candidate positions and allowing the instructor to select a desired one from them, for example, a position (for example, a child) having a predetermined relationship with the candidate collaborative work place is set as a new collaborative work place placement position. It may be determined automatically.

  Note that the process of step S5 may be executed any time after the candidate cooperative work place is obtained in step S3, or may be executed before step S4.

  Returning to the description of FIG. As described above, when each candidate candidate and the role of a new collaborative work place and the arrangement destination of the collaborative work place are determined, the determined content is passed to the collaborative work place creator 50. The collaborative work place creation device 50 creates a new collaborative work place corresponding to the determined content and registers it in the collaborative work place DB 10 (S6), and sends an e-mail requesting participation to the collaborative work place to each member candidate. (S7). It is preferable to incorporate a link (for example, URL) to the cooperative work place in this e-mail. In addition, a message indicating the invitation to the collaborative work place may be shown in the e-mail. In step S7, the mail transmission destination determining unit 52 determines the basic member candidates and additional member candidates obtained in steps S2 and S3 (excluding those deleted by the instructor from those member candidates. The candidate is included) is determined as the destination of the e-mail.

  The collaborative work place creation device 50 registers each message of the original electronic mail group 200 on the electronic bulletin board of the new collaborative work place created in step S6. That is, for each e-mail composing the e-mail group 200, the sender is the contributor, the mail text is the message content, and if there is an attached file, an e-mail post message including the attached file is created. Register on the electronic bulletin board. At this time, if there is a reply relationship in the email group, a mail thread composed of the reply relationship (that is, if mail B is a reply to mail A, B becomes a child of A. The configured tree structure) is stored as a thread or tree structure of those messages registered in the electronic bulletin board. Thus, by providing information on the electronic mail group 200 to the newly created collaborative work place, each member candidate can easily understand the theme handled in the collaborative work place when accessing the collaborative work place. Note that the reply relationship of the e-mail can be obtained from e-mail header information (for example, an In-reply-to: field).

  In addition, a user interface for inputting whether each member candidate is willing to participate in the collaborative workplace is provided in the newly created collaborative workplace, and the member candidate who has received the e-mail transmitted in step S7 However, it may be possible to specify either participation or non-participation for the user interface. Such a user interface can be configured, for example, as a web page that includes a GUI (Graphical User Interface) component that shows options for participation or non-participation. A member candidate who has entered the user interface as not participating is deleted from the list of members in the collaborative workplace.

  In the above embodiment, each user can create a new collaborative work place using e-mail managed by the mail client software on his client device as a material. In such a system, different users sometimes create a collaborative workplace using the same or similar group of emails as a material. In such a case, if a collaborative work place is created for each instruction, collaborative work places on the same or similar themes may stand up and cause confusion. Therefore, a method for reducing the rage of the collaborative work place on the same or similar theme will be described below with reference to FIG.

  In this procedure, when the workplace information extractor 40 acquires an email group as a material (S11), a collaborative workplace using the same or similar email group as the email group has been created in the past. It is determined whether or not (S12).

  For this determination, when the collaborative work place management apparatus 20 creates a collaborative work place using an email group as a material, the collaborative work place management apparatus 20 stores the identification information of each email used as the material. As the identification information, it is preferable to use a message ID held in the electronic mail as data. However, this is only an example, and a combination of a sender, a receiver, and a title may be used as identification information. The identification information of the e-mail used as the material may be stored in the collaborative work place DB 10 as one of the attribute information of the collaborative work place, for example.

  In the determination in step S12, the work place information extractor 40 compares the e-mail group acquired in step S11 with the e-mail group made up of each collaborative work place in the collaborative work place DB 10. Then, when a predetermined percentage or more of mails match between the acquired electronic mail group and the electronic mail group of materials of a certain cooperative workshop, it is determined that the cooperative workshop has already been created. However, this determination is only an example. Since there is information about the group of e-mails that are both materials or materials, the degree of similarity between the collaborative workplace to be created and the existing collaborative workplace can be determined from the degree of commonality between them. When there is an existing collaborative workplace higher than the value, it can be determined that “the collaborative workplace has been created”. In this case, the existing collaborative workplace whose degree is higher than the threshold value can be considered as a promising candidate of the collaborative workplace that the instructor intends to create from now on.

  When it is determined in step S12 that it has been created, the work place information extractor 40 presents the existing collaborative work place whose similarity is higher than the threshold value to the instructor (S20), and inquires whether to use this existing collaborative work place ( S21). For this purpose, for example, a web page including a list of images and members of the web page of the existing collaborative work place and a GUI part for inputting whether to use the work place may be transmitted to the client device. . If the instructor makes a reply to the inquiry that the existing workplace is to be used, the workplace information extractor 40 registers a message in the existing collaborative workplace among the email group acquired in step S11. Those that are not registered are identified (this can be done by using the identification information of the mail), and those unregistered messages are added to the electronic bulletin board at the workplace (S22). Here, regarding the message group newly added to the electronic bulletin board in step S22, some members of the existing workplace do not know. Therefore, the mail transmission destination determination unit 52 obtains, as a transmission destination, a member who is neither the sender nor the receiver of the email that is the source of the added message among the members of the existing workplace, and the mail transmission unit 54. However, an e-mail including the added message group in the body is transmitted to each of these destinations (S26). In other words, in this step, for each member of the existing workplace, out of the e-mails acquired in step S11, those whose members are neither senders nor receivers are extracted, and thereby one or more e-mails are extracted. An e-mail including the contents of one or more extracted e-mails is created and transmitted to the member.

  If it is determined in step S12 that the collaborative work place corresponding to the material e-mail group has not been created, the work place information extractor 40 performs the same process as steps S2 and S3 in the procedure of FIG. An existing collaborative work place (candidate collaborative work place) having characteristics similar to the characteristics of the electronic mail group is obtained (S13 and S14). In this process, the similarity between the electronic mail group and the existing collaborative workplace is obtained, and if there is a collaborative workplace where the similarity exceeds a predetermined threshold, it is determined as a similar workplace (S15). Since the determination here is to determine whether or not the same cooperative work place has already been created, the threshold value used for this determination is higher than the threshold value used when obtaining the candidate cooperative work place in the procedure of FIG. High value.

  When it is determined that there is a similar work place, the work place information extractor 40 presents the similar work place to the instructor (S23), and inquires whether to use it (S24). If the instructor responds that it will be used, the message of the e-mail group acquired in S11 is incorporated into the electronic bulletin board of the similar work place (S25), and each of those mails among the members of the similar work place. An e-mail including a message of the e-mail group is transmitted to a person who has neither sent nor received (S26).

  If it is determined in step S15 that there is no similar work place, the work place information extractor 40 and the collaborative work place creator 50 create a new collaborative work place by the same processing as steps S4 to S7 in the procedure of FIG. S16 to S19).

  In the procedure of FIG. 9, when the instructor instructs the use of the existing collaborative work place in step S21 or S25, the existing work place among the senders or receivers of the e-mail group acquired in step S11. There may be people who are not members of. The collaborative work place creation device 50 may seek such a person and add it as a new member to the existing work place. When a new member is added, the collaborative work place creation device 50 transmits an e-mail including a link to the existing work place to the added member.

  As described above, in the present embodiment, one or more aspects such as human, temporal, or information content are selected for the email group selected as the material in finding a new cooperative workshop member candidate. Use similar collaborative workshop information at. This makes it possible to extract member candidates from existing discussion / information exchange networks that cannot be understood only from the group of e-mails.

  The embodiment described above is merely an example, and various modifications are possible within the scope of the technical idea of the present invention.

  For example, in the above example, the instructor manually selects one e-mail to be used as material, but instead, the instructor inputs selection conditions and uses e-mail groups satisfying the selection conditions as materials. You may make it select automatically. The program for automatic selection may be incorporated in the form of an applet or the like into a web page for prompting selection of material mail, or may be incorporated in the form of a plug-in or the like in the browser of the client device. As a selection condition, for example, a keyword (or a logical expression composed of a plurality of keywords) can be considered. In this case, the program for automatic selection uses a well-known keyword search technique, so that an e-mail having a high degree of suitability for the keyword (for example, a suitability higher than a predetermined value or a suitability from the top). Within the predetermined order, or a combination thereof is searched from the mail box of the instructor in the client device, and this is transmitted to the collaborative work place management device 20 as a material for creating the collaborative work place. Further, when the user designates one or more e-mails as selection conditions, the similarity of the characteristics of the message contents (for example, the keyword vector extracted from the message contents) is high with respect to the selected e-mails (similarity is high). The e-mail may be searched from a mailbox as a material for creating a collaborative work place (e.g., a predetermined value or more, within a higher predetermined order, or a combination thereof). In addition, as a selection condition, an email sender (To: field), a recipient (From: field), or both can be used. In this case, the automatic selection program searches an email group including a designated sender / recipient combination from a mailbox as a material for creating a collaborative work place.

  In the above embodiment, on the assumption that the instructor selects one group of electronic mails, one cooperative work place is created from the electronic mails. However, instead of this, a configuration is also possible in which the instructor selects a miscellaneous group of e-mails and automatically generates a plurality of collaborative workplaces from them. In this case, as one method, a method is conceivable in which the e-mail group selected by the instructor is clustered into a plurality of clusters according to the message contents, and a collaborative work place is created for each cluster by the method of the above embodiment.

  For example, assume that six e-mails 400-1 to 400-6 are input to the mail group input device 30 as shown in FIG. In this case, the mail group input device 30 passes the emails to the document classification device 70 provided in the collaborative work place management device 20. The document classification device 70 obtains the features (for example, keyword vectors) of the titles and / or text messages of the respective emails, and creates clusters 410-1 and 410-2 for each email group having similar features. To do. For this clustering, an existing cluster analysis technique may be used. And the collaborative work place corresponding to each cluster is created by applying the method of the above-mentioned embodiment to each of each cluster 410-1 and 410-2.

  In the above example, e-mail is used as a material for creating a collaborative work place, but this is only an example. In addition to electronic mail, there are various communication means between users, such as mailing lists, web mails, and instant messages. Even if these communication means other than e-mail are used as long as the record data of the communication can be stored, the method of the above embodiment can be used by using the stored communication record as a material.

  The mechanism for supporting the creation of the collaborative workplace exemplified above can be typically realized by causing a computer to execute a program describing the processing of each component described above.

  In the above, a mechanism for supporting creation of a collaborative work place is provided in the collaborative work place management apparatus 20 that manages the collaborative work place DB 10, but this is merely an example. Of course, the mechanism may be constructed on a computer different from the collaborative work place management apparatus 20.

It is a figure which shows an example of the system configuration | structure of embodiment. It is a figure which shows the example of the user interface for inputting the email used as the raw material of a collaborative work place. It is a figure which shows an example of the preparation procedure of a collaborative work place. It is a figure for demonstrating the information which can be extracted from the selected email group. It is a figure which shows an example of the information of each collaborative work place hold | maintained in collaborative work place DB. It is a figure for demonstrating an example of the narrowing-down method of a member candidate. It is a figure for demonstrating another example of the member candidate narrowing-down method. It is a figure for demonstrating the presentation process of the candidate of the arrangement position of a new cooperation workshop. It is a figure which shows an example of the collaborative workshop creation procedure incorporating the mechanism which reduces the ruffle of the collaborative workshop about the same or similar theme. It is a figure for demonstrating the example which produces a some collaborative work place from the selected email group.

Explanation of symbols

  10 collaborative workplace DB, 20 collaborative workplace management device, 30 mail group input device, 40 workplace information extractor, 42 member candidate extractor, 44 member role determiner, 46 collaborative workplace location determiner, 50 collaborative workplace creator, 52 E-mail destination determination unit, 54 E-mail transmitter.

Claims (18)

A program for causing a computer to function as a collaborative work place creation support device for creating and registering a new collaborative work place for a collaborative work place management device for managing an electronic collaborative work place for members to exchange information. And for the computer,
An inter-user message selected according to a selection condition directly selected from the instructor or specified by the instructor is acquired as a determination material for creating a new cooperative work place,
Based on the predetermined information related to the acquired inter-user message and the predetermined information related to each collaborative work place managed by the collaborative work place management device, the candidate member of the new collaborative work place is extracted,
Registering a new collaborative workplace including the member candidates or those selected from those member candidates as participating members in the collaborative workplace management device,
Program for executing processing. The program according to claim 1,
In the step of extracting candidate members,
A comparison between a set of senders and receivers of the acquired inter-user message and a set of members of each collaborative workplace managed by the collaborative workplace management device;
And a comparison between the acquired inter-user message and information registered in each cooperative work place managed by the collaborative work place management device,
A comparison between the period during which the acquired inter-user message was exchanged and the activity period of each cooperative workshop managed by the cooperative workshop management device;
Selecting one or more candidate collaborative workplaces based on at least one of and extracting members belonging to the selected candidate collaborative workplace as the member candidates;
A program characterized by that. The program according to claim 2, wherein the computer is
Presenting the candidate collaborative workplace to the instructor and receiving an instruction from the instructor as to whether to use the candidate collaborative workplace,
When receiving an instruction to use the candidate collaborative work place, instead of registering the new collaborative work place, register the contents of the acquired inter-user message as a registration message in the candidate collaborative work place,
A program for further executing processing. The program according to claim 3, wherein the computer is
When receiving an instruction to use the candidate collaborative workplace, among the member candidates, a person who is not included in the candidate collaborative workplace members is registered as a member of the candidate collaborative workplace.
A program for further executing processing. It is a program as described in any one of Claims 2-4, Comprising: With respect to the said computer,
When receiving an instruction to use the candidate collaborative work place, an invitation including link information for accessing the candidate collaborative work place among the member candidates not included in the candidate collaborative work place members Send a message,
Program for executing processing. It is a program as described in any one of Claims 2-5, Comprising: With respect to the said computer,
When receiving an instruction to use the candidate collaborative workshop, the acquired inter-user message is sent to a member who has not received at least one of the acquired inter-user messages among the participating members of the candidate collaborative workshop. Send an explanation message containing the content of the message that the person has not received,
A program for further executing processing. It is a program as described in any one of Claims 2-6, Comprising: With respect to the said computer,
Determining the roles of the participating members in the new collaborative workplace based on the roles of those participating members in the candidate collaborative workplace and registering them in the collaborative workplace management device;
A program that further executes processing. It is a program as described in any one of Claims 1-7, Comprising: With respect to the said computer,
A user who is related to the organization with respect to the member candidate is obtained from a predetermined device that manages information on the organization,
Adding users with organizational relationships as participating members of the new collaborative workplace,
A program that further executes processing. The program according to claim 1, wherein the computer is
The role of the participating member in the new cooperative workshop is at least one of the transmission / reception relationship of the acquired messages between users, the organizational relationship of each of the participating members, and the role of the participating member in the existing cooperative workshop Determine based on one and register with the collaborative workplace management device;
A program that further executes processing. The program according to any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the computer is
The relationship of the new collaborative workplace with respect to the collaborative workplace already registered in the collaborative workplace management device,
A comparison between the member candidates and a member set of each collaborative workshop registered in the collaborative workshop management device;
A comparison between the acquired inter-user message and information registered in the registered collaborative workplace,
And a comparison between the communication period of the acquired inter-user message and the activity period of those registered cooperative workshops,
And registering the new collaborative work place in the collaborative work place management device so as to form the determined relationship with respect to the registered collaborative work place.
A program that further executes processing. It is a program as described in any one of Claims 1-10,
When registering the new collaborative work place in the collaborative work place management device, register the new collaborative work place including the content of the acquired inter-user message as a registration message.
A program characterized by that. The program according to claim 11, wherein
In the process of registering the new collaborative work place including the body text of the acquired inter-user message as a registration message, the contents of the inter-user message are related to form a thread corresponding to the reply relationship of the inter-user message. Register the registered message group in the new cooperative workshop,
A program characterized by that. It is a program as described in any one of Claims 1-12,
In the step of extracting candidate members,
The sender or receiver of the acquired inter-user message is extracted as a basic member candidate of a new collaborative workplace,
Comparison between a set of senders and receivers of the acquired inter-user message and a set of members of each collaborative workplace managed by the collaborative workplace management device, and management of the acquired inter-user message and the collaborative workplace management device A comparison with the information registered in each collaborative workplace, and a comparison between the period during which the acquired inter-user message was exchanged and the activity period of each collaborative workplace managed by the collaborative workplace management device, Selecting a candidate collaborative workshop based on at least one and extracting members belonging to the selected candidate collaborative workshop as additional member candidates;
A program characterized by that. A program according to any one of claims 1 to 13, wherein the computer is
An invitation message including link information for accessing the new collaborative workplace is transmitted to the member candidate.
Program for executing processing. The program according to any one of claims 1 to 14, wherein the computer is
Sending an explanation message including the content of the acquired inter-user message to a person who does not belong to the set of senders and receivers of the acquired inter-user message among participating members of the new collaborative workplace,
A program for further executing processing. The program according to any one of claims 1 to 15, wherein the computer is
Providing a user interface means for selecting a person who is a member of the new collaborative workplace from the member candidates;
A program for further executing processing. A collaborative workplace creation support method executed by a computer in order to create and register a new collaborative workplace with respect to a collaborative workplace management device that manages an electronic collaborative workplace for exchanging information between members,
An inter-user message selected according to a selection condition directly selected from the instructor or specified by the instructor is acquired as a determination material for creating a new cooperative work place,
Based on the predetermined information related to the acquired inter-user message and the predetermined information related to each collaborative work place managed by the collaborative work place management device, the candidate member of the new collaborative work place is extracted,
Registering a new collaborative workplace including the member candidates or those selected from those member candidates as participating members in the collaborative workplace management device,
A collaborative workplace creation support method characterized by this. A collaborative work place creation support device for creating and registering a new collaborative work place for a collaborative work place management device for managing electronic collaborative work places for members to exchange information,
Means for acquiring an inter-user message selected according to a selection condition directly selected from the instructor or designated by the instructor as a determination material for creating a new cooperative work place;
Means for extracting candidate members of the new cooperative workshop based on the predetermined information related to the acquired inter-user message and the predetermined information related to each cooperative workshop managed by the cooperative workshop management device;
Means for registering a new collaborative work place including the member candidates or those selected from the member candidates as participating members in the collaborative work place management device;
A collaborative workplace creation support device comprising: