JP4639615B2 - Network path search program and device - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a technique for searching for a human path that searches for and provides a connection (ie, a human connection) between persons.

  Conventionally, various human resource information providing systems have been developed in which each person's profile is stored in a database, and in response to a request from a user, a person suitable for the request is searched from the database and provided. In recent years, with the development of technologies such as knowledge management systems, document sharing systems, and search engines, users can use these systems to meet their purposes, for example, those who are publishing documents suitable for their purposes. Increasingly, people are searching for new people and sending e-mails.

  However, even if a user can find a person who meets the purpose by searching for a profile, the user has too few points of contact with that person, so the approach is often difficult. . On the other hand, those who have been approached don't feel so good because they don't know how they were found or how they use information about themselves. Will.

  For this reason, in introducing a certain person to the user, a system that considers the connection from the user to the person or provides information on the connection has been proposed.

  In Patent Document 1, information on a pair of an introduced person and an introducer is registered in a database, a pair including a person input as a search key as an introducer is searched from the database, and is included in the searched pair. There has been disclosed an apparatus for obtaining information of people introduced directly or indirectly by a person having a search key by recursively repeating a process of further searching a database for a pair having an introducer as an introducer.

  Further, Patent Document 2 extracts a pair of acquaintances as elements of a human relation by extracting a sender name and a destination person name included in an electronic mail message. Based on the extracted information, the human relation is visually determined. An apparatus for creating and displaying the map information shown in FIG.

  Patent Document 3 discloses an apparatus in which each user registers his / her personal network information and obtains a complex personal network relationship based on the registered personal network information. This apparatus has a function of providing, for example, a list of people who have a strong personal relationship with the user from the information related to the personal relationship.

  Further, Patent Document 4 shows a function of pointing the closest person connection path (hereinafter referred to as a human network path) to a specific individual in the same system as Patent Document 3.

JP 2000-57166 A JP 2000-66970 A JP 2003-132158 A JP 2003-141381 A

  The devices disclosed in Patent Documents 1, 3, and 4 have a problem that the burden on the user is large because basic information for obtaining a personal relationship is manually input by each user.

  In addition, since the device disclosed in Patent Document 2 seeks a human network relationship by monitoring an electronic mail, due to a privacy problem or the like, only in a limited situation where constituent members permit monitoring of the electronic mail. There is a problem that it cannot be applied.

  One of the objects of the present invention is to provide a new method for obtaining a human network path between persons. Another object of the present invention is to make it possible to collect information that is used as a basis for searching for human network paths in a manner that does not impose a burden on individual registered users and that is less likely to cause privacy problems. .

The present invention relates to a group information storage unit that stores group information indicating which person belongs to the group for each group, and each information source of a plurality of organization information corresponds to the information source. A rule storage means for storing a set of group formation rules for grouping a plurality of persons into one group, wherein the information source includes at least people belonging to the group group indicated by the group information group stored in the group information storage means. Is a publicly available rule storage means, for each of the information sources of the plurality of organization information, collects data from the information source, and applies a set of group formation rules corresponding to the information source to the collected data To form groups that satisfy each group formation rule belonging to the set, and Group forming means for generating group information to be registered and registering in the group information storage means, means for obtaining a human network path between the designated first person and the second person, the group information storage means based on the group information of each group stored, and the human and nodes, the nodes each two's relationship belonging to the same group to form a network with a single link, over the network, corresponding to the first human By searching for a route that reaches the node corresponding to the second person from the first person, a personal path that connects the first person and the second person is formed, and information on the human path is provided. A program for functioning as a human network path forming means is provided.

  In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the human network path forming means indicates, as information of the human network path, information relating to a group to which the two persons forming the link belong to each link constituting the human network path. Create information.

  In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the personal network path forming means includes, for each of one or more human network paths formed between the first person and the second person, each link constituting the personal network path. Is obtained from a predetermined familiarity storage means, and a score of the personal network path is calculated based on the familiarity of each link, and the personal network paths are ranked and presented according to the score.

  In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the information source is open to at least people belonging to the group group indicated by the group information group stored in the group information storage unit.

  The best mode for carrying out the present invention (hereinafter referred to as “embodiment”) will be described below with reference to the drawings.

  First, with reference to FIG. 1, an example in the case where the personal network path search function according to the present invention is applied to a human resource introduction apparatus will be described.

  The human resource introduction device 100 is connected to a data communication network 200 such as the Internet or an in-house LAN (Local Area Network), and allows a user who operates a user PC (personal computer) 210 to search for human resources via the network 200. Provide services such as network path search.

  In the human resource introduction device 100, a user DB (database) 102 is a database that holds and manages information on users registered in the service of the device 100. An example of data contents held and managed by the user DB 102 is shown in FIG. In the example of FIG. 2, the user DB 102 is provided for each registered user, authentication information such as a uniquely assigned user ID (identification information), a user name, a password for user authentication, and communication with the user. A registration record including a telephone number, an E-mail (e-mail) address, a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of a homepage (HP), the profile information of the user, and the like is held. The URL of the home page is the URL of the home page established by the user, and this field is blank for a user who does not open a home page. The profile information is information composed of items useful for human resource search such as the user's specialty field and work history, and is used to find a user who meets the request of the introduction requester. Each item other than the user ID of such user information may be input from the user when the user performs user registration with respect to the human resource introduction device 100. The user ID may be given by the human resource introduction device 100, or if user management is already performed in another system such as the workflow server 220, the user ID already given in the other system is acquired. The apparatus 100 may be used. Regarding items other than the user ID, items already registered in another system can be used. In other words, the user DB 102 does not need to be dedicated to the human resource introduction device 100, and a common system for various services can be provided on the data communication network 200 and shared. As the user DB 102, a conventionally used one can be used.

  The group DB 104 is a database that holds and manages information on groups configured by users registered in the user DB 102. FIG. 3 shows an example of data contents of the group DB 104. In this example, the group DB 104 includes items such as a group ID for uniquely identifying the group, a group name, a member list, and a distance between members for each group. The member list is a list in which user IDs of users belonging to the group are listed. The inter-member distance is a value obtained by quantifying the closeness between users in the group in the form of “distance”. Since it is a distance, the closer it is, the smaller the value. This group DB 104 is constructed and maintained by the group forming unit 120. The processing of the group forming unit 120 will be described later.

  The request processing unit 110 is a user interface unit for receiving a human resource introduction request or a human network search request from a user. The request processing unit 110 provides a screen for accepting the request to the user PC 210 of the user, for example, in the form of a WWW (World Wide Web) web page (homepage), and the search condition input on the request acceptance screen is displayed. According to this condition, the human resource search unit 106 or the personal network path search unit 108 performs a search, and the search result is provided to the user PC 210 in the form of a web page or the like. In addition, the request processing unit 110 performs user authentication at the time of login for the service provided by the human resource introduction device 100. In user authentication, authentication information registered in the user DB 102 is used.

  The human resource search unit 106 is a means for searching the user DB 102 for human resources that meet the request in response to a user human resource introduction request. The human resource search unit 106 has a function of accepting specification of search conditions for each data item registered in the user DB 102 and selecting users who satisfy the conditions, for example, in descending order of satisfaction of the conditions. As a search condition, for example, various specification methods such as a combination of conditions (combined search) for each information item are allowed from “the specialty field is“ information technology ”” or the like. Various systems for searching for human resources that match the search conditions for such user registration information have been known, and the human resource search unit 106 of the present embodiment can also use them.

  The human network path search unit 108 is a means for searching for a human network path that is a connection on a human network between two users. When a relationship between two people who are acquaintances is defined as one link, a network path is formed by forming a path connecting two target users by a chain of the links. In the present embodiment, users belonging to the same group are regarded as acquaintances, and a personal network path is formed by a chain of such two links belonging to the same group.

  From another point of view, the formation of the human network path between the two parties is based on the following condition from the power set of the set of groups (that is, the set consisting of the entire subset of the set consisting of individual groups): It is equivalent to extracting a satisfactory subset. The condition is that, first of all, the two persons who are subject to the formation of a human path (that is, the two persons at both ends of the path) are included in one of the groups that are elements of the extracted subset, and Second, each group that is an element of the extracted subset can always find another group whose elements are the users that are its own elements from the subset.

  FIG. 4 illustrates a plurality of groups 302 to 314 such as a group 302 including users A, B, C, and D and a group 304 including users C, E, and F, for example. Bidirectional arrows connecting the users A to L indicate links of acquaintances. As can be seen from the figure, a link exists between two members belonging to the same group. In this example, for example, the human network path between the user A and the user L is (1) A-D in which the link between the users A-D (group 302) and the link between the users D-L (group 314) are connected. -L path, (2) link between user AB (group 302), link between user BG (group 306), link between user GI (group 308) and user IL There is an A-B-G-I-L path connecting the links (group 314) (there are other, but the enumeration is omitted).

  Such a human network path can be obtained by referring to the information of each group in the group DB 104. Specifically, for example, a network (this is an undirected graph) with a user as a node and a link between two members in the same group as an edge is formed, and on this network, 2 of human path search targets What is necessary is just to search the path | route which reaches the other person from one person of a person (namely, two persons of the both ends of a personal network path | pass). For this route search, an algorithm well known in graph theory can be used. Through such processing, one or more human network paths connecting the two persons are obtained.

  In order to perform this route search efficiently, information on the network (graph) including the above-described intra-group links is created in advance from the group information illustrated in FIG. It is also preferable for the path forming unit 108 to perform a route search while referring to this network information. An example of the network information in this case is shown in FIG. In this example, for each link, the user IDs of the two parties constituting the link and the group ID of the group to which the two parties belong are registered. By using such network information, it is possible to obtain a human network path between the two parties, and it is possible to obtain a group to which each link constituting the human network path belongs.

  In addition, as another method for obtaining a human network path, a method as shown in FIG. 6 may be considered. In this method, when one of the two persons who wants to obtain a human network path is the start user A and the other is the end user B, the human network path search unit 108 first includes a group including the start user A as a member, and an end user. Each group including B as a member is obtained from the information in the group DB 104, and a list L1 of groups corresponding to the former and a list L2 of groups corresponding to the latter are created (S10, S12). Next, the personal path search unit 108 extracts one group from the list L1 (temporarily called group X), and searches the list L2 for a group including one or more users belonging to this group (temporarily referred to as group Y) ( S14). If such a group is found from the list L2, this search is repeated for all the groups in the list L1 (S14). If a pair of groups X and Y is found in the search of S14 (the determination result of S16 is affirmative (Y)), the pair is recognized as a human network path (S18). As shown in FIG. 7A, the specific human network path required at this time is a path composed of two links from the start point A to the end point B via the user C common to the groups X and Y. is there. That is, in this example, the group 320 belongs to the list L1, the group 322 belongs to the list L2, and the user C belongs to both the groups 320 and 322. If there are a plurality of users common to the groups X and Y, a plurality of human network paths can be created.

  After the extraction of the two-link network path in this way, the network path search unit 108 next selects one group (X) from the list L1 and one group (Y) from the list L2, respectively. A group (Z) including one or more users in group X and one or more users in group Y is searched from group DB 104 (S20). If a group Z that matches the conditions is found in this search (the determination result in S22 is affirmative (Y)), the relationship XZ-Y is recognized as a human network path (S24). Specifically, by this search, as shown in FIG. 7B, a three-link network path from the start point A to the end point D through the users C and D in that order is obtained. In this example, users A and C are members of group 330 belonging to list L 1, users D and B are members of group 332 belonging to list L 2, and users C and D are members of group 334. In S20, such a search is repeated for all pairs of groups belonging to the list L1 and groups belonging to the list L2.

  According to the process of FIG. 6 described above, it is possible to automatically detect a human path of 3 links or less. According to the famous “Milgram experiment” conducted in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist in the United States, he tried to follow one person from the other who was chosen at random (randomly) by following an acquaintance relationship. The result is that the median number of people included is likely to be reached at most 5 people, ie at most 6 links. This is between two people in a wide range, such as in the United States, but the recruitment system 100 is applied to a more narrowly-defined population. Since there are many cases where people who have the same purpose and interest are searched, it is highly possible that the human network path between the two is obtained with a shorter number of links. Therefore, the process as shown in FIG. 6 is also practically effective.

  Although the example of the human path search process has been described above, the path length of the path can be obtained for each individual human path obtained when searching for the human path. The path length of the personal path is obtained by summing up the lengths of the individual links constituting the personal path. The length of each link is the “distance between members” of the group to which the link belongs. The “distance between members” of each group can be obtained from the group DB 104. The path length of the network path thus obtained can be used as a score indicating the thickness of the network of the network path. In other words, the shorter the path length, the greater the familiarity of each link, so it can be determined that the connection is thick. When searching for a personal path, the human path search unit 108 can calculate the path length by adding the “distance” of each link. In addition, when a plurality of human path are required, they can be sorted in the order of shortest path length or longest order. Further, an upper limit value of the route length is determined in advance, and when searching for a human path, further searching for a path exceeding the upper limit route length can be terminated. As a result, it is possible to obtain only a human network path having a closeness equal to or shorter than the upper limit route length.

  When receiving a search request from the request processing unit 110, the personal path search unit 108 performs the search processing as described above and returns the search result to the request processing unit 110. One typical example of a search request related to a human network path is that a user who logs in to the apparatus 100 by operating the user PC 210 designates a partner who wants to know the relationship with the user as a search condition. For this reason, the request processing unit 110 has a function of providing an input screen (for example, a web page) for inputting a partner whom the human network wants to know. Upon receiving this search request, the request processing unit 110 passes the user IDs of the user and the user specified in the search condition to the personal network path search unit 108, and performs a path search between the two users. The request processing unit 110 receives the search result from the personal path search unit 108, creates a search result screen (for example, a web page) indicating the search result, and transmits this to the requesting user PC 210.

  An example of the search result web page 400 provided at this time is shown in FIG. This example is a search result provided by the apparatus 100 when the requesting user “Ichiro Suzuki” requests a search for a personal connection path between himself and “Taro Yamada”. In this example, the searched paths are displayed in order of increasing human network. Also, in each personal network path, users intervening from the request source “Ichiro Suzuki” to the opponent “Taro Yamada” are shown in order, and the links are linked to the links (indicated by arrows) between these users. The name of the group that is the parent of the acquaintance relationship that means is shown. For example, the path with the highest personality link is a link between “Ichiro Suzuki” and “Hanako Tanaka” belonging to the group “Current XX Department Δ △ Section” and “XX Bulletin Board □□ Thread” It is a list of links of “Hanako Tanaka” and “Taro Yamada” belonging to the group. Note that the group “current XX department Δ △ section” is a group of users belonging to the section within the company, and is derived from the organizational relationship within the company. On the other hand, the group “XX bulletin board □□ thread” is a group of users who have posted to the thread on the electronic bulletin board, which is derived based on information provided by the electronic bulletin board system. Yes (the types of groups and how to form groups will be explained later). By using such a search result screen, the user can know the transmissions that can be used when accessing the desired partner. Follow the transmissions (human network path) in order and ask for a bridge to the partner. be able to. Further, when the user directly accesses the partner, the partner can know the relationship between the user and the user by communicating the information of the personal connection path to the partner, so that there is a sense of security. In addition, the search result screen displays the name of the group corresponding to each link that makes up the personal network path, so the user who receives the search result follows the relationship with the partner. You can know if you can wear it, and if you pass the information on the human network pass including this group information from the user to the other party, the other party can better understand the relationship between you and the user.

  The display of the search result of the personal path is not limited to that shown in FIG. 8, and an illustrative display method such as that shown in FIG. 9 is also suitable. In the example of FIG. 9, the human network path from the user who requested the search (“you”) to the target “Yamada” is shown as the surrounding frames 502 to 506 indicating the groups corresponding to the individual links 512 to 520 and their respective frames. Shown along with the group name. In this example, a multi-line path from “you” to “Hayashi”, from “Hayashi” to “Kato” or “Suzuki”, and from “Kato” or “Suzuki” to “Yamada” is shown simultaneously.

  The above is a case where the user designates a partner and obtains a human network path between the two, but the user designates two persons other than himself and obtains a human network path between them. However, the above processing can be applied as it is.

  In addition, it is possible to provide a service for performing a personal path search in conjunction with a human resource search. In other words, the human resource search unit 106 performs a search based on the human resource search conditions input by the user, and the human network path search unit 108 searches for a human network path between each person obtained by the search and the user. is there. An example of the search result screen provided to the user by this service is shown in FIG. In this search result screen 600, for each of “Taro Yamada”, “Yoshio Yoshida”,... Searched for the human resource search conditions input by the user, from the requesting user to the person along with the person's profile. The human network path (predetermined number in descending order of the human network relationship) is shown.

  Next, returning to FIG. 1, the group forming unit 120 will be described. The group forming unit 120 finds a group formed by the user group based on various types of public information existing on the data communication network 200, and registers the group information in the group DB 104.

  Examples of public information that can be used for this group detection are as follows. As a first example, there is organization data indicating an organization structure in a company. The organization data includes, for example, information on which node (department) belongs to which node (department) in a tree-like organization structure such as business division-department-section. In addition, depending on the company, a task force (or a project team) consisting of human resources across such departments may be formed as necessary, and such task force information (at least members) May be included in organizational data. When this human resource introduction device 100 is operated in one company (or in a company group that has a relationship in which mutual organization data may be disclosed), such organization data can be regarded as public information.

  For example, in a company that performs workflow management using the workflow server 220, such organization data is registered in the workflow server 220 in order to perform processing for workflow management. In addition, in an organization in which a directory service using LDAP (Light Weight Directory Access Protocol) or the like is performed, organization data is included in information managed by a directory server such as an LDAP server. Therefore, the group formation unit 120 acquires organization data from the workflow server 220 or the directory server, and forms a group based on the organization data.

  Group formation from organizational data is, for example, “one group of users belonging to the same department as one group”, “one group of users belonging to the same section”, “same task force (TF and TF) The user group belonging to (abbreviated) may be performed based on a group formation rule such as “a group of users”. Such a rule group for group formation is registered in the group formation unit 120 (group formation rule group 122).

  FIG. 11 shows an example of data contents of the group formation rule group 122. In this example, each rule is enumerated, and the distance between members of the group formed according to the rule is associated with each rule. In this example, for the sake of convenience, a simple name such as “currently the same section” is shown as a rule. However, in actuality, it is applied to the data structure of public information (organization data in this example) to which the rule is applied. A possible rule description or program is registered. In an environment where past organization data can be obtained, there are groups corresponding to the rule such as “past same section” (that belongs to the same section in past organization data) in addition to the “current same section” rule. Can be formed.

  The group forming unit 120 refers to the published organization data, finds a group of users who satisfy each rule, recognizes it as a group, and registers it in the group DB 104. At this time, the group formation unit 120 assigns a unique group ID to each formed group, creates an entry for the group in the group DB 104, and registers each user belonging to the group in the member list of the DB 104. . Further, the distance between members corresponding to the rule used when forming the group is obtained from the data of the rule group 122 and registered in the group DB 104. Further, a group name is created based on the name of the department, section, or task force indicated in the organization data, and is registered in the group DB 104.

  As described above, the organization data is exemplified as an example of the public information that is the basis of the group formation. However, various other public information can be used. For example, an electronic bulletin board is an example. An electronic bulletin board that is widely open to the public is of course, but an electronic bulletin board that is open to the public within a company or company group is also regarded as public information when the human resource introduction device 100 is operated within that company or company group. be able to. Examples of group formation rules related to the electronic bulletin board include rules such as “I have registered as a member on the same electronic bulletin board” and “I have written a message in the same message thread on the same electronic bulletin board”. it can. These rules are also illustrated in FIG. The group forming unit 120 accesses the electronic bulletin board server 230 on the data communication network 200, information on registered members of each electronic bulletin board managed by the server, and information on message posters of each message thread included in each bulletin board. And a group is extracted from the information according to the rule.

  As yet another example of public information that forms the basis for group formation, there is a homepage (in particular, a page that shows a link to a homepage of an acquaintance) that each user has made public. That is, using the URL of the user's home page (HP) registered in the user DB 102, the home page is acquired from the web server 240, and the friend's home page of another user registered in the user DB 102 is included in the home page. If a link is established directly as an acquaintance, both users are grouped together. For example, the URL of each link listed on the link page in a certain user's home page is checked, and when the URL corresponds to the URL of one of the user's home pages (HP) registered in the user DB 102, both Group users. When a link destination is displayed on the page of the link, consent is often obtained for the link destination. Therefore, the two users having such a link relationship can be regarded as a kind of acquaintance. In this case, the URL of each user's link page is also registered in the user DB 102, thereby facilitating processing. Of course, the same handling may be applied to links listed on general pages other than the link page.

  As described above, the human resource introduction device 100 according to the present embodiment can automatically generate a group of users from public information existing on the data communication network 200. Then, based on the automatically generated group information, the above-described human path search can be performed. Therefore, according to the present embodiment, as in the prior art, the individual user or the administrator of the personnel introduction device 100 does not need to explicitly input the acquaintance relationship between the individual users one by one. A search service can be provided. Also, in this embodiment, the privacy problem as in e-mail is not involved, but the group information that is the basis of personal connections is extracted using public information, so the mechanism of this embodiment can be applied. The scope of the target is wider than that of conventional e-mail-based systems.

  Although the preferred embodiment of the present invention has been described above, the above embodiment is merely an example, and the book can be variously modified within the nail mark range.

  For example, the above-described embodiment is an example in the case where the personal network path search is applied to a human resource introduction service, but the present invention can also be realized as an apparatus that provides a simple personal network path search service (for example, the configuration of FIG. 1). From the human resource search unit 106).

  It is also possible to link various services other than the exemplified human resource introduction service with the personal network search service of the embodiment. For example, a system in which a service that mediates the buying and selling of goods and services between users and this personal network search service is linked. In this system, each user registers what he wants to sell and what he wants to buy (and the conditions for buying and selling it) in the buying and selling brokerage service, and the service matches the seller and the buyer. Then, when providing the matching result to the seller or buyer (or both), the personal network path between the two is obtained, and the personal network path is also provided with information. Thereby, since the seller and the buyer can understand each other's relationship, there is an advantage that a sense of security can be obtained.

  In the above embodiment, the path length that is the sum of the lengths (distances) of the individual links constituting the network path is used as the score for evaluating the thickness (strength) of the network of the obtained network path. This is just an example. In this example, the strength (familiarity or intimacy) of the acquaintance relationship is expressed by distance, but it can of course be expressed by, for example, the strength of familiarity instead of distance. In this case, the thickness of the personal connection can be indicated by, for example, multiplying the strengths of the individual links. Further, for example, the number of users appearing in the personal connection path can be used as the score. In this case, since it can be generally said that the smaller the number of users, the thicker the human network, the score may be evaluated according to the concept. Moreover, you may make it obtain | require the score which carried out comprehensive evaluation of both the path | route length of a human body path | pass, and the number of users who appear in a human body path | pass.

It is a functional block diagram which shows schematic structure of the human resource introduction apparatus provided with the personal network path search function based on this invention. It is a figure which shows an example of the data content which user DB hold | maintains and manages. It is a figure which shows an example of the data content which group DB hold | maintains and manages. It is a figure for demonstrating formation of the personal network path | pass based on a group. It is a figure which shows the data content example of the network information which shows the network which the link between two parties in the same group forms. It is a flowchart which shows an example of the method of calculating | requiring a human network path | pass. FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating an example of a human network path obtained by the procedure of FIG. 6. It is a figure which shows an example of the display screen which shows the search result of a personal path. It is a figure which shows another example of the display screen which shows the search result of a personal path. It is a figure which shows an example of the display screen which showed the personal path search result together with the personnel search result. It is a figure which shows the example of the data content of a group formation rule group.

Explanation of symbols

  DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 100 Personnel introduction apparatus, 102 User DB, 104 Group DB, 106 Personnel search part, 108 Human network path search part, 110 Request processing part, 120 Group formation part, 122 Group formation rule group, 200 Data communication network, 210 User PC, 220 Workflow server, 230 electronic bulletin board server, 240 web server.

Claims (8)

Computer system,
Group information storage means for storing group information indicating for each group who belongs to the group;
Rule storage means for storing a group formation rule set for grouping a plurality of persons corresponding to the information source for each information source of a plurality of organization information, wherein the information source includes at least the group A rule storage means that is open to the people belonging to the group indicated by the group information group stored in the information storage means,
For each of the information sources of the plurality of organization information, each group belonging to the set by collecting data from the information source and applying a set of group formation rules corresponding to the information source to the collected data Group forming means for forming groups satisfying the formation rules, generating group information indicating the groups, and registering the group information in the group information storage means;
A means for obtaining a human network path between a designated first person and a second person, based on the group information of each group stored in the group information storage means, with a person as a node , By forming a network in which the relationship between the two parties each belongs to one link, and searching for a route on the network from the node corresponding to the first person to the node corresponding to the second person, A network path forming means for forming a network path connecting the first person and the second person and providing information on the network path;
Program to function as.   The network path forming means creates, as the network path information, information indicating the information of a group to which the two parties forming the link belong to each link constituting the network path. The program according to claim 1. The network path forming means is configured to determine, for each of one or more network paths formed between the first person and the second person, a closeness of a group including each link constituting the network path. Obtained from a predetermined familiarity storage means, calculates the score of the human network path based on the familiarity of each of those links, ranks and presents the human network path according to the score,
The program according to claim 1. The rule storage means stores, for each group creation rule, a degree of familiarity indicating the closeness between people in a group formed based on the rule,
The group forming unit obtains information on the intimacy corresponding to the group creation rule applied when forming the group for each formed group from the rule storage unit, and registers the intimacy storage unit.
The network path forming means, for each of one or more human network paths formed between the first person and the second person, the link as a closeness of each link constituting the network path. The intimacy of the group including the two constituent members is obtained from the intimacy storage means, the score of the human network path is calculated based on the obtained intimacy of each link, and the human blood path is ranked according to the score. Present,
The program according to claim 1.   5. The information source according to claim 1, wherein the information source is organization data possessed by a workflow management system, and the group formation rule set includes a rule that groups people belonging to the same department as one group. The program according to any one of the above items.   The information source of the organization information is an electronic bulletin board system, and the set of group formation rules includes a rule that people registered as members of the same electronic bulletin board in the electronic bulletin board system are grouped, and the electronic Rules for grouping people who wrote messages in the same bulletin board in the bulletin board system as one group, and people who wrote messages in the same thread in the bulletin board system as one group in the bulletin board system The program according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein at least one of the rules is included.   The organization information source is a homepage established by each person, and the set of group formation rules includes a link to the second person's homepage in the first person's homepage The program according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein a rule that includes the first and second persons as one group is included. Group information storage means for storing, for each group, group information indicating who belongs to the group;
Rule storage means for storing a group formation rule set for grouping a plurality of persons corresponding to the information source for each information source of a plurality of organization information, wherein the information source includes at least the group A rule storage means that is open to the people belonging to the group indicated by the group information group stored in the information storage means,
For each of the information sources of the plurality of organization information, each group belonging to the set by collecting data from the information source and applying a set of group formation rules corresponding to the information source to the collected data Forming a group that satisfies the formation rule, generating group information indicating each of the groups, and registering the group information in the group information storage unit; and
A means for obtaining a human network path between a designated first person and a second person, based on the group information of each group stored in the group information storage means, with a person as a node , By forming a network in which the relationship between the two parties each belongs to one link, and searching for a route on the network from the node corresponding to the first person to the node corresponding to the second person, A network path forming means for forming a network path connecting the first person and the second person and providing information on the network path;
A human-path search device comprising:

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