WO2018029642A1

WO2018029642A1 - Scenario based scheduling system with predictive intelligence

Info

Publication number: WO2018029642A1
Application number: PCT/IB2017/054903
Authority: WO
Inventors: Keyurkumar Jayendrakumar PATEL
Original assignee: BALARAJU, Siva Prasad
Priority date: 2016-08-11
Filing date: 2017-08-11
Publication date: 2018-02-15

Abstract

The present disclosure relates to a system and method for generating scenario based schedules with predictive intelligence comprising; an activity collection module that is configured to retrieve a list of activities. A profile management module that is configured to store the list of preferences of the user related to the list of activities based on various activity parameters. A recommendation module configured to prioritize, assemble and assign the list of activities based on context specific information such as time period required for completion of each activity and others. A calculation engine configured to generate a plurality of schedules for various scenarios based on various activity parameters. A real time scoring and notification module configured to calculate a plurality of scores based on analysis of the user's current data and the historical data and further notify the user about the generated plurality of schedules for various scenarios and other parameters.

Description

SCENARIO BASED SCHEDULING SYSTEM WITH PREDICTIVE

INTELLIGENCE

FIELD OF INVENTION

[001] The present invention relates to a scheduling system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method for dynamically creating, maintaining and updating one or more schedules of activities for one or more users.

BACKGROUND

[002] In today's world of interruptions, where time is a scarce resource, it is very critical for every one of us to manage the time effectively for accomplishing the required tasks or activities efficiently. The activities which require to be accomplished are often published by various sources and keeping track of all in the timely manner has been really a challenge.

[003] In order to prepare and manage the schedule, there is a significant amount of efforts required from the user. This involves the following:

a. Need to keep track of various sources which publish these tasks and activities which require to be accomplished

b. Need to group or prioritize the activities

c. Evaluating the time required to accomplish each of the activities

d. Determining the time availability of the user and schedule duration e. Adjusting the schedule when activities or their priority changes as well as when schedule activities are delayed or completed in advance f. Keeping track of the schedule activities and progress update

[004] In everyday routine, people have to engage in multiple activities and each of these activities may be aligned to a common goal or different goals set by the people individually. Naturally, each of these activities would come from different sources and managing and addressing such activities becomes a tedious task. For example of academic schedule, a student nowadays attends schools, tuitions, hobby classes etc. and as such comes across various activities from multiple such sources. Students are involved in various activities with respect to the academic as well as extracurricular activities. While some of the activities are pre-defined, others would emerge with time. In order to manage these activities efficiently, a user (student, for example) must record, prioritize and schedule the activities in a time bounded manner. To address such a need, several tools exist in the art that allows user to list down the activities or tasks, to prioritize or sort the tasks and schedule the tasks as per the user preferences.

[005] However, the existing tools have a shortcoming in that user has to provide certain information for scheduling system or tool to function, such as user's time availability and time required to accomplish each activity and others. There are no means provided to automatically create a schedule based on the pending activities and re- schedule the list of activities under various circumstances and the user has to manually make changes to the schedule. Moreover, the conventional scheduling systems are designed to provide only the list of pending and completed activities in real time as an indicator of progress of schedule and do not take into consideration various parameters to present the actual progress of the user with respect to time management and goal achievement such as utilization rate and efficiency of schedule which helps user to be more effective in managing time and becoming more productive in long run. In addition, there exists a difficulty in recording and generating the schedules for the list of activities available from multiple sources as it relies on user to record them manually. Also it is very difficult in existing systems to change the running schedule for accommodating the changes in the amount of work, where new activities are added or existing activities require more time to accomplish or their priorities change.

[006] Another lacking feature of the conventional scheduling systems, includes the recommendation on the required time to accomplish each activity and determining exact user time availability requirements before hand as well as missing on quantifying the progress of a schedule in terms of productivity and efficiency.

[007] Many of the schedulers in use today requires user's intervention at least to obtain the user time availability, the list of activities and time required to complete each activity. Moreover, the existing schedulers provide only a single timetable/ schedule to the user based on the one or more inputs obtained and do not present various viable schedule options taking into consideration the user capabilities and circumstances in order to create multiple schedules to meet users' needs.

[008] Hence to overcome all the above mentioned difficulties, there exists a need for automatic scheduling system that can generate various scenarios based plurality of schedules collecting activities from various sources without user intervention and allow users to select any schedule based on their preferences to aid manage various activities. Moreover, there also exists a need for quantifying the schedule progress for user effectiveness in managing time and overall productivity improvement. In addition, it also requires updating and notifying the user automatically and effortlessly, when the scheduled activity is delayed or new activities are added to the existing schedule.

SUMMARY

[0010] This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts, in simplified manners which are further described in the detailed description of the invention. This summary is neither intended to identify key or essential inventive concepts of the subject matter, nor to determine the scope of the invention.

[0011] The present disclosure is regarding the scheduling system which overcomes the limitations mentioned above with the unique features including; an ability to record activities from various external sources without user intervention; providing context based recommendation for the time required to accomplish activities; calculating various scenarios for the schedule for various time availability options derived from the historical data points, user preferences and contextual recommendations; presenting the user various scenarios for a schedule to choose from; quantifying the schedule success in real-time for better understanding of progress; providing options to recalculate the schedule in various events of change in the activities or in the current schedule.

[0012] The present disclosure relates to a system and method for generating scenario based schedules with predictive intelligence comprising: an activity collection module that is configured to retrieve a list of activities, from a repository of external sources and from a user's repository. A profile management module that is configured to store in the repository a list of preferences of the user related to the list of activities based on various activity parameters. A recommendation module in communication with the activity collection module and the profile management module is configured to prioritize, assemble and assign the list of activities based on context specific information such as time period required for completion of each activity and others. A calculation engine in communication with the above described modules is configured to generate a plurality of schedules for various scenarios based on the user time availability. A real time scoring and notification module that is configured to track the activity progress, calculates various scores representing the time utilization and efficiency of the schedule based on the analytical data and notifies the quantifiable success factor of the active schedule to the user. The real time scoring and notification module in communication with the calculation engine also adjusts the schedule automatically and notifies the user about any changes in the schedule that may require user's approval.

[0013] To further clarify advantages and features of the present invention, a more particular description of the invention will follow by reference to specific embodiments thereof, which are illustrated in the appended figures. It is to be appreciated that these figures depict only typical embodiments of the invention and are therefore not to be considered limiting in scope. The invention will be described and explained with additional specificity and detail with the appended figures.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

[0014] The invention will be described and explained with additional specificity and detail with the accompanying figures in which:

[0015] Figure 1 is a view of an inventive system for generating scenario based schedules.

[0016] Figure 2 is a block diagram of an inventive scenario based scheduling system.

[0017] Figure 3 is a process flow of an inventive method for generating scenario based schedules with predictive intelligence.

[0018] Figure 4 is a flow chart diagram for generating scenario based schedules along with interaction within each module.

[0019] Further, those skilled in the art will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and may not have necessarily been drawn to scale. Furthermore, in terms of the construction of the device, one or more components of the device may have been represented in the figures by conventional symbols, and the figures may show only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the figures with details that will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of the description herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION:

[0020] For the purpose of promoting an understanding of the principles of the invention, reference will now be made to the embodiment illustrated in the figures and specific language will be used to describe them. It will nevertheless be understood that no limitation of the scope of the invention is thereby intended. Such alterations and further modifications in the illustrated system, and such further applications of the principles of the invention as would normally occur to those skilled in the art are to be construed as being within the scope of the present invention.

[0021] It will be understood by those skilled in the art that the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory of the invention and are not intended to be restrictive thereof.

[0022] Reference throughout this specification to "an aspect", "another aspect" or similar language means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the present invention. Thus, appearances of the phrase "in an embodiment", "in another embodiment" and similar language throughout this specification may all, but not necessarily do, refer to the same embodiment.

[0023] The terms "comprises", "comprising", or any other variations thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process or method that comprises a list of steps does not include only those steps but may include other steps not expressly listed or inherent to such a process or method. Similarly, one or more devices or sub-systems or elements or structures or components proceeded by "comprises... a" does not, without more constraints, preclude the existence of other devices or other sub-systems or other elements or other structures or other components or additional devices or additional sub-systems or additional elements or additional structures or additional components. [0024] Unless otherwise defined, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this invention belongs. The systems, methods, and examples provided herein are only illustrative and not intended to be limiting.

[0025] Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying figures. [0026] Figure 1 illustrates a system 100 for generating scenario based schedules with predictive intelligence. The system 100 for generating scenario based schedules that include a server 105, a scenario based scheduling system 110, a network 115, a host system 120 along with external sources 125 and one or more user devices 130a to 130n.

[0027] Further, in accordance with the present invention, the user device 130a to 130n may be a mobile, a computer, a tablet, a smart watch or any other device. A server 105 may include the scenario based scheduling system 110. The network 115 may be the Internet or Wide Area Network (WAN) or other like network that covers a broad area, such as a personal area network (PAN), local area network (LAN), campus area network (CAN), metropolitan area network (MAN), a virtual local area network, or other like network capable of physically connecting computers and other devices. The host system 120 which may include various external sources 125 like various organizations, educational institutions, healthcare organization, financial institutions, project management agencies and the combinations thereof.

[0028] Figure 2 is a block diagram of scenario based scheduling system 110 consisting of an activity collection module 110a, a profile management module 110b, a recommendation module 110c, a calculation engine 1 lOd and a real-time scoring & notification module 1 lOe.

[0029] Further in accordance with the present invention, the activity collection module 110a may be configured to interoperably communicate with a repository (not shown in figure) to retrieve a list of activities from the repository based on the user's subscription. The list of activities may be any activity or task that has to be accomplished like studying course syllabus for assessments or homework, tasks pertaining to daily physical exercise schedules, personal or official routine to do lists and the like. The list of activities may be retrieved from the external sources i.e. any organizations or institutes, to the repository of external sources optionally with the standard recommended time of completion for each activity. The repository may further comprise manual entry of the list of activities provided by the user.

Each of the tasks or activities may have description and may additionally have constraint in terms of start and end time, time period required to accomplish each activity and the priority and weightage of the same. Further, in accordance with the present invention, the activity collection module 110a may also be configured to maintain the subscription to the context specific external sources which may provide information on the tasks or activities to be scheduled.

[0030] Further, the profile management module 110b may be configured to store in a repository the list of preferences of the user related to the list of activities based on various activity parameters. The list of preferences of the user may be with respect to the time availability, overriding the default settings for the time required for completion of activities or overriding the default priority of the tasks or activities retrieved from the external sources 125 or the constraints about the calendar days to be excluded for schedule (e.g. weekends or vacation days) or the number of groups of activities to be included in the daily schedule (e.g. maximum 3 types of activities to be included, for example activities of only 2 subjects should be included in the daily activities in the schedule) and the like. The activity parameters may be with respect to the user time availability, activity duration, activity priority, addition of new activities and the like. Further, the profile management module 110b may also be configured to allow the user to store preferences which may influence the scheduling process such as time availability, priority settings for group of activities and other activity parameters.

[0031] Further, the recommendation module 110c is configured to prioritize, sort and filter the user's list of activities based on the user preferences, user's historical data points and other parameters and store the final list of activities in the repository, which needs to be considered in the schedule preparation. [0032] The recommendation module 110c is further configured to maintain various context specific repositories (e.g. Educational, Financial, Healthcare or Project management related) of all the standard set of activities and their corresponding time period required for completion of the list of activities. By way of example, for the academic scheduling system, the recommendation module 110c maintains a repository of all the course wise syllabus activities and their recommended completion time period provided by the subject matter experts as well as obtained from a machine learning component of the recommendation module 110c. The recommendation module 110c also assigns the duration of the activities to the user's profile in the repository and hence does not require user intervention to provide the information. The user, may, however make changes to the gathered information, if required.. The recommendation module 110c, stores in the repository the plurality of preferences of the user related to the list of activities based on various activity parameters. The recommendation module 110c, assigns the recommended time period required to accomplish each available activity in the repository (required to be scheduled) based on the contextual information.

[0033] The recommendation module 110c may be customized to suit student specific learning capabilities. The user may direct the system to prepare a timetable for the given set of academic activities. The system may calculate the required time for the list of activities required to be completed from the syllabus of various subjects like language arts, math, social studies or the like. The system may calculate the required time to complete the syllabus of language arts, math and social studies based on the student's time requirements in the past for these academic activities. If the historical data is not present then the recommendation module uses the contextual information from the repository and assigns the recommended time for each of the one or more activities. For example, based on the user's academic activities data, the system learns that Math Chapter 1 took 90 minutes to accomplish and Chapter 2 data is not present for this user so it searches its contextual repository and learns that the recommended time for completing Chapter 2 is 240 minutes.

[0034] Now referring to the calculation engine HOd, may be configured to generate plurality of schedules for various scenarios using predictive intelligence models, based at least on the user time availability from the profile settings. The various scenarios may be with respect to the user time availability and/or other user preferences including but not limited to priority, weightage and constraints in terms of start and end of the activities. The term 'predictive intelligence' may refer to machine based prediction models such as logistic regression, generalized linear models, nearest neighbor algorithms and the like, as known in the art. One or more of these algorithms executed by the machine learning component of the system are used to train the predictive intelligence model based on the user activity data and predict the various user related activity parameters. For example, at a very basic, of the plurality of schedules generated, one schedule may have been generated with a predicted user time availability of 1 hour per day and other schedules may have been generated with a predicted user time availability of two hours per day and so on.

[0035] Further in accordance with the present invention, the calculation engine may further be configured to retrieve the user's time availability preferences, the parameters related to the activities and historical user data points based on analytical data from the repository and may also influence the schedule generation and synchronization flow. Further, the calculation engine HOd may activate the user selected schedule for tracking the progress and notification of each activity based on the user's preference.

[0036] Further, in another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, the system 100 may also provide a technique to store the academic activities to be accomplished by the user. Each activity may contain the following information such as activity description that may be obtained from the course syllabus. Time duration to accomplish this activity may be the time or a range with minimum, optimal and maximum values in hours and minutes. The system also provides a facility to prioritize the order in the schedule. The system may also provide the facility to assign weightage of the activity and constraints for instance limitations about the activity can't start before a particular date and/or it could not be scheduled on particular days in a week, weekends or the like.

[0037] Further, the system 100 may also provide on demand and automatic ways for triggering the creation of schedule based on the time period for which schedule should be generated. When the user does not provide the preferences about time availability, the system predicts the user time availability information based on the machine predicting models and the historical data points of the user's previous schedules. The historical information may be referred to as information of the user, like for example the user has preferred to allocate minimum of 3 hours and maximum of 5 hours of academic activities. Based on this knowledge, the system generates various schedule scenarios considering 3 hours, 4 hours and 5 hours every day as time availability and allocates activities over the specific time period.

[0038] Further, the real-time scoring & notification module HOe, is configured to calculate and notify the plurality of scores based on the completion status and analysis of current data and historical data of the scheduled activities. The current data may be related to the performance of the user in the existing schedule and based on other parameters. The historical data may be related to the performance of the user in the previous schedules and based on other parameters. The plurality of scores computed by the real-time scoring and notification module HOe include but are not limited to a utilization factor and an efficiency factor of the user selected schedule.

[0039] Furthermore in accordance with the present invention, the real-time scoring & notification module 1 lOe, may calculate the utilization of the time availability and efficiency of completing the scheduled activities for quantifying a schedule/timetable success. The utilization factor specifies how user's time availability is factored in the current schedule. For example, if user has four hours every day available for accomplishing the activities and the generated schedule has only utilized three hours then the utilization factor is at 75%. The utilization factor thus computed is notified to the user, thereby indicating that there could be more activities which can be accomplished than the ones in the current schedule. In other words, the utilization factor is an indicative of the productivity of the user. It may be noted that the terms 'utilization' and 'productivity' are used interchangeably throughout this disclosure. The efficiency factor specifies how user is keeping up with the accomplishment of the planned activities. For example, if at a given point in time in a current schedule, if user has completed activities totalling sixty hours versus the planned activities of hundred hours up to that point in time, then the efficiency factor is at 60%. The efficiency factor thus computed is notified to the users. Such analytical pointers as computed by the real-time scoring & notification module l lOe are meant to encourage the user to keep a check on the progress with respect to the activities to be accomplished and help the user in increasing the productivity.

[0040] Furthermore in accordance with the present invention, the real-time scoring & notification module l lOe is further configured to notify the user, the status of the scheduled activities and the plurality of scores through various analytical and graphical representations. The output of real-time scoring and notification module l lOe may also be fed into the calculation engine l lOd for synchronizing schedule update. For example, if one or more activities in the current schedule of the user are not completed as scheduled, then the calculation engine l lOd may re-compute the end date/ end time for the current list of activities for the user. The incomplete or delayed activities may also be notified to the user in real time for further rescheduling of activities. [0041] The scheduling system of the present invention may further include Graphical User

Interface (GUI) that may be configured for; presenting preferences or the settings for influencing the scheduling system, providing specific selection option to the user for selecting one schedule scenario out of plurality of schedules for a given time availability, displaying the time sequence of the task or activity details including the date and time period of the task or activity to be carried out, updating the status as completed or postpone, showing the periodic tasks or activities based on their status such as daily or weekly or monthly list of pending or completed or postponed activities and also showing the plurality of scores for the current running schedule as well as for the past schedules.

Now referring to Figure 3, a method for generating scenario based schedules for the user by the scenario based scheduling system 110 is illustrated. At block 510, upon receiving instructions from the user to create one or more schedules, retrieval of the list of activities from the repository, manually entered by the user is carried out. At block 515, retrieval of the list of activities received from the one or more external sources based on at least one user's subscription may be carried out. In one embodiment, the activity collection module 110a may check for the list of activities retrieved from the user and/or the list of activities retrieved from the external sources and communicate the retrieved list of activities to the recommendation module 110c. At block 520, one or more user preferences which may influence the scheduling process such as time availability, priority settings for group of activities or other activity parameters are retrieved from the repository which were set by the user. In one embodiment, the one or more preferences may be received as part of the user profile. In yet another embodiment, the one or more preferences are default preferences set by the system of the present disclosure. At block 525, the one or more preferences received from the user corresponding to one or more activities are stored in the repository. At block 530, the recommendation module 110c performs one or more of prioritizing, sorting and filtering the user's list of activities based on the user preferences and historical user data points along with the storage of the final list of activities that needs to be considered in the schedule preparation. At block 535, the time period for accomplishing one or more activities in the list of activities prepared at block 530 is retrieved from one or more external sources. In one embodiment, the time period for accomplishing the one or more activities may be obtained from one or more repositories maintaining the time period requirements for contextual activities prepared by subject matter experts through various channels and/or pre- stored in the repository. At block 540, the calculation engine 1 lOd retrieves the user time availability preferences from the repository and historical user data points, if any, from the real-time scoring & notification module l lOe. At block 545, the calculation module l lOd dynamically generates a plurality of schedules for various scenarios, using inputs received from one or more of the recommendation module 110c in addition to the user time availability preferences. For example, Ifa user prefers maximum study time of 4 hours and minimum of 2 hours per day,and the user has a list of 20 pending activities, some of the activities received from the school and some of the created as a part of exam preparation by the user herself with one hour completion time each. The calculation engine l lOd may provide plurality of schedules for the following scenarios for the user to choose and follow a preferred schedule.

hours ( 4 activities) hours ( 3 activities) hours ( 2 activities)

Day 4 Activities totaling 4 Activities totaling 3 Activities totaling 2 hours ( 4 activities) hours ( 3 activities) hours ( 2 activities)

Day 5 Activities totaling 4 Activities totaling 3 Activities totaling 2 hours ( 4 activities) hours ( 3 activities) hours ( 2 activities)

Day 6 Activities totaling 3 Activities totaling 2 hours ( 3 activities) hours ( 2 activities)

Day 7 Activities totaling 2 Activities totaling 2 hours ( 2 activities) hours ( 2 activities)

Day 8 Activities totaling 2 hours ( 2 activities)

Day 9 Activities totaling 2 hours ( 2 activities)

Day 10 Activities totaling 2 hours ( 2 activities)

The above information is presented to the user to choose appropriate schedule based on preferences. As per the above table, if the user selects Scenario #1, then the schedule is expected to complete in 5 days whereas Senario #2 and Scenario #3 takes 7 and 10 days respectively.

Further, the plurality of schedules are generated for various scenarios to accommodate one or more of user preferences, user time availability and the like. At block 550, activation of the user selected schedule for tracking progress and notification is carried out upon receiving user selection of at least one of the many schedules presented to the user. At block 555, notification of the user progress and scoring based on the time utilization and efficiency of the user selected schedule may be carried out. At block 560, the recalculation of the remaining schedule is triggered in the event of changes in the activities or if some activities are delayed based on the at least one user preferences. Further, the user selected schedule of activities may also be shared with the one or more other users, based on the user's consent.

[0042] Figure 4 is flow chart diagram for generating scenario based schedules along with interaction within each module comprising Activity collection module, Profile management module, Recommendation Module, Calculation Engine and Real Time Scoring & Notification Module along with a repository 635. At block 610 the activity collection module may retrieve from the repository 635 the list of activities, the list of user activities from the external sources based on the user subscription and allows user to save activities to be considered in the schedule. At block 615, Profile management module may store in the repository 635 the user preferences which influence the scheduling process such as time availability, priority settings for group of activities and others. At block 620, the recommendation module may store in the repository 635 the final list of activities to be considered in the schedule preparation and may prioritize, sort and filter the list of activities based on the user preferences, historical user data points and other parameters and may also assign the time period required to accomplish each scheduled activity based on the contextual repository of activity time periods gathered from subject matter experts. At block 625, the calculation engine may retrieve from the repository 635, the various user's time availability preferences and historical user data points and may generate dynamically a plurality of schedules for various scenarios, based on at least one user time availability and may also activate the user selected schedule for tracking progress and notification. At block 630, Real Time Scoring & Notification Module, may notify the user progress and scoring based on the utilization and efficiency of the user selected schedule and may also trigger the recalculation of the remaining schedule in event of changes in the activities or if some activities are delayed based on user preferences by sending across the output results back to the calculation engine.

[0043] Further in accordance with the above embodiment, the system may also be configured to measure the time utilization and efficiency of the at least one user selected schedule. The utilization factor specifies how user's time availability is factored in the current schedule. For example, if user has 4 hours every day available for accomplishing the activities and the generated schedule has only utilized 3 hours then the utilization factor is at 75%. This gives user clear indication that there could be more activities which can be accomplished than the ones in the current schedule. Higher the percentage shows, the user is utilizing the available time effectively.

[0044] In one exemplary embodiment, the system may measure the effectiveness of the at least one user selected schedule. The efficiency specifies how user is keeping up with the accomplishment of the planned activities. For example, if at a given point in time in a current schedule, if user has completed activities totalling six hours versus the planned activities of ten hours up to that point in time, then the efficiency factor is at 60%. Higher the percentage more efficient the user is. These analytical pointers encourage users to remain on track and help them being more productive in long run.

[0045] In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, the system is further configured to calculate the time required for completing each activity or task based on projecting time availability of the user and generates plurality of schedules for various scenarios with the daily activity time allocation and the schedule completion.

[0046] In another exemplary embodiment, the system for generating scenario based schedules may further comprise, updating the plurality of schedules of activities in event of changes in one or more activity parameters or certain activities are delayed or completed early than scheduled. [0047] In another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, example of the system

100 with respect to the academic studies is disclosed. The user may not provide the time availability for the academic schedule, the system itself based on the historical data points and projection models prepares various user time availability scenarios like 4 hours every day or 5 hours every day and so on for scheduling the activities over time. The academic activities may be added by the user or created automatically based on the school calendar activities e.g. course syllabus for the assessments or homework. The context based recommendation repository for course syllabus based activity has general time period recommendation for the completion like, for ninth grade student, it may require 4 hours to complete the first chapter in the math course. The recommendation module may be customized to suit student specific learning abilities. While the user directs system to prepare a schedule for a given set of academic activities, the system intelligently calculates the required time and shows the daily activities list based on the various student available times for academic activities. During the period of active timetable, if the student has not been able to keep up with the activities or decides to change the priority of the activities or adds more study time, then the system will adjust the remaining timetable activities and will show the student real-time status of the timetable and its completion. The real time approach by the system keeps the schedule always updated and in synchronism with the schedule of activities. The selected schedule of activities may be modified automatically when the third party sources appends, deletes, or modifies the syllabus in the repository or when the student does not follow the original schedule of activities. The student may be notified when there are modifications and the schedule of activities may be altered or when the activities are not on track with the original schedule of activities. As the student makes any changes to the selected schedule, then the system will automatically update the changes by itself. [0048] Now referring to Figures 5-15, an exemplary academic scheduler based on system and methods of the present invention is illustrated. Fig.5 illustrates a screenshot of a user interface of a school management information system (MIS) presenting a list of activities with respect to the syllabus for the user in relation to a particular task, for example, first assessment for grade 2. The activity collection module of the scheduling system 110 is configured to access the list of activities from the school MIS through APIs and the like. The list of activities to be completed by the user along with at least the suggested date of completion is now received by the activity collection module 110a. In one embodiment, the list of activities such as the course, syllabus etc. may be entered manually by the user. Fig. 6a illustrates the list of activities as received by the user from the school MIS in a message inbox. Fig. 6b illustrates a detailed view of the course work comprising list of activities (i.e. syllabus) received in the user inbox. As can be seen, the stipulated date/time of completion (as obtained from the recommendation engine) is also indicated. Fig. 7a and 7b illustrates a detailed list of activities upon receiving user input for English and Mathematics respectively. The one or more list of activities as shown in Fig. 7a and 7b constitute the syllabus prescribed to the user as part of the academic curriculum. Expected time for completing the one or more activities in the list of activities is also indicated. Upon receiving user selection for creating a new time table, an interface presented to the user is shown in Fig. 8. As can be seen from Fig.8, the list of activities for which the time table scenarios have to be prepared is selectable by the user. Further, the only inputs required to be entered by the user is the start date for the selected time table scenarios as the end date is based on the selected scenario by the user at later point in time. Further, based on the user preferences with respect to time availability and the cumulative list of activities selected by the user, a plurality of time table scenarios are generated and presented to the user, as shown in Fig.9. Upon receiving a user selection for one of the system generated scenarios, the time table for the selected duration is presented to the user as indicated in Fig. 10. As can be seen from Fig. 10, a day wise break-up of the one or more activities for the selected time table along with the time allocated for each of the one or more activities within the time period allocated by the user is rendered. Further, it may be noticed that the activity status and completion can now be easily monitored by the user. Fig. 11-13 illustrate the user interface that indicate one or more ways to monitor performance of a selected time table. More specifically, Fig. 11 shows the efficiency factor of the user as described in one or more embodiments. For example, as can be seen from Fig. 11, for the given time table, the user has completed a total of 8 hours of activities where as 16 hours of activities are not completed as per schedule which should have been until current date resulting in an efficiency of 33%. Similarly, Fig. 12 is an indicative of time utilization factor which is an indication of how much time is being spent on the academic activities than the planned. This enables the user to analyse the situation and accommodate more activities into the time table thereby making the user more productive and efficient. Now moving to Fig. 13, distribution of the one or more activities in the selected in the time table is illustrated. Fig. 14 represents the user interface for manually adding one or more activities for creating a time table in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure and Fig. 15 illustrates an user interface for receiving user preferences for generating a time table. The user preferences typically include the time availability per day and user non-availability on any day of the week. The user inputs thus received are used to generate a plurality of scenarios for generating the most suitable time table for the user.

[0049] Further, in another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, the method for generating scenario based schedules, may include retrieving, by the system, the user time availability from the repository and calculate the total time in hours and minutes. Further, the system retrieves the user defined activities and the activities received from the external sources from the repository and prioritize them and calculates the time required to accomplish the list of activities considering the constraints if any. Further, the system proactively notifies user if the time required to accomplish all the pending activities is more than the available time. If this is the case, then the user reviews the time availability and either increase the time for academic activities or reduce the activities to be accomplished in the given schedule period. Further, the system performs mapping of all the prioritized activities with the daily time schedule starting from the schedule start date. For example, an activity with a constraint set as only weekend activity, the system routine will plan this activity only on the weekends based on the priority if set. Further, once the system routine completes its execution, it produces the activity schedule for the user with the required details such as each activity date, activity to work on and activity time duration. Furthermore, the user can track the progress of the activities in the schedule and update their completion status. The system proactively provides progress report to the user in case corrective actions need to be taken.

[0050] In another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, the system 100 further includes schedule synchronizer in the event of change of the user preferred schedule. For example, in one scenario, changes in the academic activities need to be accomplished in the schedule. When the new academic activities are added or removed from the current schedule, the system recognizes the change and recalculates the required time duration to complete the new activities along with the pending activities and reassign the activities to the available time duration. On completion, the system notifies the user of any change in the timetable completion.

[0051] One skilled in the art may appreciate that the system and methods of the present invention for generation of scenario based scheduling may also be applicable to multiple areas like academic studies, personal fitness activity planning, medical procedures, resource management and the like. The schedule as described herein may also be referred to as a timetable, agenda, calendar, plan, scheme, program and the like. The user may refer to as students, learners, beginners, trainees, teachers, mentors, educators, instructors, guides, trainers, lecturers, professors, tutors, organizations employees or the like.

[0052] Now referring to Fig. l and Fig.2, another exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure illustrates a fitness training scheduler. The fitness scheduler application may be configured to run on any operating system environment and may be accessible over a plurality of devices (130a-130n).

[0053] Further, the fitness scheduler application is communicatively connected to the scenario based scheduling system 110 hosted on server 105. The fitness scheduler application comprises an activity collection module 110a that may be configured to receive a plurality of activities from the user of the fitness scheduler application (manually) or from third party fitness training applications such as Fitocracy™. The profile management module 110b of the fitness schedule application captures the user profile information including but not limited to user time availability, user health data and the like. Next, the recommendation module 110c performs the prioritizing, sorting and filtering the list of activities based on the user profile information and communicates the list of activities along with expected completion times to the calculation engine 1 lOd.

[0054] The calculation engine 1 lOd now generates a plurality of fitness training schedules for the user based on various scenarios. Upon selection of at least one time table for fitness training, the real time scoring & notification module HOe monitors the progress and displays at least the time utilization factor and efficiency factor to the user on the dashboard of the fitness scheduler application.

[0055] While specific language has been used to describe the invention, any limitations arising on account of the same are not intended. As would be apparent to a person skilled in the art, various working modifications may be made to the method in order to implement the inventive concept as taught herein.

[0056] The figures and the foregoing description give examples of embodiments. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that one or more of the described elements may well be combined into a single functional element. Alternatively, certain elements may be split into multiple functional elements. Elements from one embodiment may be added to another embodiment. For example, order of processes described herein may be changed and are not limited to the manner described herein. Moreover, the actions of any flow diagram need not be implemented in the order shown; nor do all of the acts need to be necessarily performed. Also, those acts that are not dependent on other acts may be performed in parallel with the other acts. The scope of embodiments is by no means limited by these specific examples.

Claims

Claims:

1. A scenario based automatic scheduling system comprising: a. an activity collection module configured to receive a list of activities from one or more sources;

b. a profile management module configured to receive one or more preferences in relation to the list of activities;

c. a recommendation engine configured to perform one or more actions wherein the one or more actions result in one of prioritizing the list of activities, grouping the list of activities and assigning context specific information for the one or more activities; d. a calculation module configured to aggregate outputs of the activity collection module, the profile management module and the recommendation engine to generate one or more scenario based schedules;

e. a real time scoring and notification module configured to record and notify one or more scores, wherein the one or more scores are based at least on the completion status of one or more schedules.

2. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the one or more sources comprise

subscribed third party sources.

3. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the one or more preferences comprise at least a time availability and priority in relation to the list of activities.

4. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein at least one of the one or more actions performed by the recommendation engine comprises estimating the time taken to complete each of the one or more activities in the list of activities.

5. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the recommendation engine is configured to perform the one or more actions using predictive intelligence models.

6. The system as claimed in claim 5, wherein each of the one or more scenario based schedules comprises one or more list of activities arranged in accordance with time allocated for each of the one or more activities.

7. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the real time scoring and notification module is configured to compute the one or more scores based on at least the present scenario based schedules or the historic scenario based schedules.

8. The system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the one or more scores comprise at least a utilization factor and an efficiency factor.

9. The system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the one or more scores computed by the real time scoring and notification module is further communicated to the

recommendation engine.

10. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the scenario based dynamic scheduling system is an academic scheduling system.

11. A method for operating the scenario based automated scheduling system of claim 1, the method comprising:

a. providing a means for receiving one of the list of activities and the one or more user preferences;

b. providing a means for selecting one of the one or more scenario based schedules computed by the calculation module;

c. providing a means for updating the status of one or more list of activities in the selected one or more scenario based schedules; and

d. providing a means for monitoring at least the current scenario based schedule and the historic scenario based schedule.

12. A method for scenario based automated scheduling, the method comprising:

a. receiving a list of activities from one or more sources;

b. receiving one or more user preferences in relation to the list of activities;

c. performing one or more actions, the one or more actions resulting in one of prioritizing the list of activities, grouping the list of activities and assigning context specific information to the list of activities

d. aggregating the outputs of step a, b and c and generating one or more scenario based schedules; e. recording and notifying one or more scores wherein the one or more scores are based on at least the completion status of one or more scenario based schedules.

13. The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein one of the one or more sources for the list of activities includes subscribed third party sources.

14. The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the one or more user preferences in relation to the list of activities comprise at least the time availability and priority.

15. The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein at least one of the one or more actions comprises estimating the completion time for each of the one or more activities in the list of activities.

16. The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the estimation of completion time is calculated using context specific information and one or more predictive intelligence models.

17. The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein each of the one or more scenario based schedules comprises one or more activities in the list of activities arranged in accordance with allocated time.

18. The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the one or more scores comprise a utilization factor and an efficiency factor.