Semantic Communication Architecture Innsbruck (SCAI)

1. Semantic Communication Architecture Innsbruck (SCAI) Dieter Fensel, Ioan Toma, AndreeaGagiu, IkerLarizgoitia, Birgit Leiter, IoannisStavrakantonakis August30, 2012

2. Reference architecture • “A reference architecture in the field of software architecture or enterprise architecture provides a template solution for an architecture for a particular domain. It also provides a common vocabulary with which to discuss implementations, often with the aim to stress commonality. • A reference software architecture is a software architecturewhere the structures and respective elements and relations provide templates for concrete architectures in a particular domain or in a family of software systems. • A reference architecture often consists of a list of functions and some indication of their interfaces (or APIs) and interactions with each other and with functions located outside of the scope of the reference architecture. • Reference architectures can be defined at different levels of abstraction. • A highly abstract one might show different pieces of equipment on a communications network, each providing different functions. • A lower level one might demonstrate the interactions of procedures (or methods) within a computer program defined to perform a very specific task. • A reference architecture provides a template, often based on the generalization of a set of solutions. These solutions may have been generalized and structured for the depiction of one or more architecture structures based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that have been observed in a number of successful implementations. Further it shows how to compose these parts together into a solution. • Reference Architectures will be instantiated for a particular domain or for specific projects.” Source Wikipedia • Compare also https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/15635/WSMX%252520-%252520architecture.pdf

3. SCAI *sky • SCAI is a reference architecture for a semantic engagement engine applicable to various domain and task. • Core of its efficiently and flexibility is its separation of concern • And the proper separation and alignment of form and substance. • In total, SCAI includes three different types of functionalities

4. Infrastructure • The infrastructure layer provides basic functionalities needed by the other functionalities. • The infrastructure layer is responsible for separating and multiple alignments of communication content and communication channels.

5. Communication • The communication layer used the basic functionality of the infrastructure layer to implement the on-line communication of an agent. • It combines these elements into useful patterns of on-line interactions. • It supports exchange of meaning.

6. Engagement • Engagement turns communication into cooperation. • Why is it important? • Because customers are important for any enterprise and the engagement concept creates strong relationships between the customers and the enterprise. • It supports value generation through on-line cooperation.

7. Customization of the Architecture • To derive concrete products and services from the reference architecture it must be instantiated for Application types (Tasks) and Domains. • Task customization: • Advertisement • CRM • Revenue management • Brand management • Reputation management • Quality management • Domain Customization: e.g., eTourism

8. Infrastructure: The SCEI bus

9. Infrastructure • Content can be down-/and uploaded from GUIs, Repositories, CMSs, and others • Channels are the millions of on-line communication possibilities Infrastructure Content Channels

10. Infrastructure • Consists of three major components: • Content manager • Responsible for managing the content of communication • Channel Manager • Responsible for managing the channels for communication • Weaver • Responsible for aligning content and channels

11. Infrastructure – Content manager • Import content from • GUI • CMS • Repository • Others • Export content from • GUI • CMS • Repository • others

12. Infrastructure – Content manager • Stores the content • Decouples storage mechanism from the rest of SCAI • Independent of any specific data store implementation i.e. database and storage mechanism

13. Infrastructure – Channel manager • Integrates a channel • Personalizes a channel • Interacts with a channel • Read • Write • Describes and aggregates channels

14. Infrastructure – Weaver • Separating content from channels also requires the explicit alignment of both. • This is achieved through a weaver. • A weaver is • an uni-set of tuples of ten elements • an execution engine for these tuples • a GUI to define these tuples • a management and monitoring component for these tuple sets

15. Infrastructure – Weaver – Tuple Set Elements 1 to 3 are about the content: • An information item defines an information category that should be disseminated through various channels. • An editor: The editor defines the agent that is responsible for providing the content of an information item. • An editor interaction protocol: This defines the interaction protocol governing how an editor collects the content.

16. Infrastructure – Weaver – Tuple Set Elements 4 to 9 are about the communication of these items: • An information type: We make a distinction between three types of content: • an instance of a concept, • a set of instances of a concept (i.e., an extensional definition of the concept), • a concept description (i.e., an intensional definition of a concept) that should be content of the communication act.

17. Infrastructure – Weaver – Tuple Set Elements 4 to 9 are about the communication of these items: • A processing rule: These rules govern how the content is processed to fit to/being re-extracted from a channel. • A channel description: The group of media that is used to disseminate/search for the information.

18. Infrastructure – Weaver – Tuple Set Elements 4 to 9 are about the communication of these items: • Scheduling information: Information on how often and in which intervals the communication will be performed which includes temporal constrains over multi-channel communication. • An executor: It determines which agent or process is performing the update of a channel. • An executor interaction protocol: It governs the interaction protocol defining how an executer receives its content.

19. Infrastructure – Weaver – Tuple Set Element 10 contains meta-information such as: • Is it a read or write • Is it executed • Is it idle • Etc.

20. Infrastructure – Weaver – Execution Engine • Matchmaking of channels and content; determines which channels are appropriate for the content to be disseminated based on the descriptions of channels and content. • Evaluates and executes the rules that specify how the content is processed to fit into channels, and also how the content is extracted from the channels. • Schedules the communication considering temporal constrains over multi-channels. • Orchestrates the interaction with an agent or process (editor or executer) and defines • how an editor collects the content • how an executer receives the content

21. Infrastructure – Weaver – GUI • The GUI supports the specification of tuples that are defining the Weaver • Definition of information item and information type • Definition of the editor and executer • Definition of interaction protocols for editor and executer • Specification of processing rules • Creation of channel descriptions

22. Infrastructure – Weaver – Management and Monitoring component • Detects deficiencies as early as possible in the functioning of the Weaver and its components • Is aware of the state of the Weaver at any time • monitoring is real time and continuous • Provides means to instrument the Weaver and its components • Listens to events generated by the instrumented components e.g. he • events related to execution of the processing rules, • events related to scheduling of communication acts, • events related to the interaction with the editor and executer. • The events represent a rich source of knowledge which can facilitate profiling, optimization and reliability of the Weaver component.

23. Infrastructure – Weaver – Management and Monitoring component • Provides visualization, analysis and reporting based on monitored data • Enables easy interpretation of the data collected during instrumentation and monitoring WP11 – Instrumentation and Monitoring

24. Infrastructure • Weaver: • uni-set of tuples - execution engine • - GUI - management and monitoring • Channel Manager • Integrates • Personalize • Interacts • Describes Channels • Content Manager • Import • Export Contents Channels Content

25. Infrastructure – Summary of Components and Functionalities

26. Communication • Active and reactive communication • Tracing the communication • Multi-channel switch • Multi-agent • Communication Patterns COMMUNICATION Multi-Channel Publishing Social Media Monitoring Impact Feedback Response

27. Communication • Meaningful communication requires often more than just a single and isolated act of exchanging information. • It can be active or reactive (Dissemination versus SMM and its integration) • It has a trace, a history • It needs multi-channel switch • It is bi-directional and multi-agent • It is based on patterns of successful interaction styles (campaigning versus individual interaction, etc.)

28. Communication – Dissemination • Dissemination (from the Latin dissēminātus = “sowing seeds”, “scatter wildly in every direction”) refers to the process of broadcasting a message to the public without direct feedback from the audience • Takes on the view of the traditional view of communication which involves a sender and a receiver. • The message carrier sends out information to many in a broadcasting system (composed of more than one channels) • Harmsworth et al. (2000) define dissemination as “delivering and receiving of a message”, “the engagement of an individual in a process” and “the transfer of a process or product”. Image taken from: http://nichcy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/rsz_1rsz_dissemination2.jpg

29. Communication – Dissemination Classification of channels by the type of service they provide: 2.1. Static Broadcasting 2.2. Dynamic Broadcasting 2.3. Sharing 2.4. Collaboration 2.5. Group Communication 2.6. Semantic-based Communication Image taken from: http://www.softicons.com/free-icons/application-icons/or-applications-icons-by-iconleak/file-cabinet-icon

30. Communication – Dissemination Multi-Channel Publishing Source: http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism/

31. Communication – Social Media Monitoring • SMM tools facilitate the listening of what people say about various topics in the social media sphere (blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.) Listening:  is active, focused, concentrated attention for the purpose of understanding the meanings expressed by a speaker.

32. Communication – Social Media Monitoring FORUMS/NEWSGROUPS MICROBLOGS VIDEO SHARING The Conversation SOCIAL NETWORKS WIKIS SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS AGGREGATORS PHOTO SHARING MAINSTREAM MEDIA BLOGS

33. Communication – Integration of Publication and Monitoring • Communication • Active and reactive communication Multi-Channel Publishing Social Media Monitoring Impact Feedback Response

34. Example of Active Communication performed by a hotelier on Facebook

35. Customer response to the hotel’s message

36. Transmitter: guest at hotel External Re-activecommunication Reactor: hotelier Source: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g53449-d96753-r130438938-Hampton_Inn_Pittsburgh_Greentree-Pittsburgh_Pennsylvania.html

37. Communication – Trace Tracing a conversation through all channels involved is crucial for making communication effective and efficient, and is therefore required for • Communication has a history • The communication history IS the trace • Communication must be remembered otherwise it is meaningless • Communication • Active and reactive communication • Tracing the communication Multi-Channel Publishing Social Media Monitoring Impact Feedback Response

38. Communication – Multi-Channel Switch (Online) Communication is scattered over multiple, often very different channels. • Agents are challenged to disseminate information over all appropriate channels. • Activities of all channels the agent is active in must be monitored. • Impact, Feedback and Responses need to be collected from all channels. • Communication • Active and reactive communication • Tracing the communication • Multi-channel switch Multi-Channel Publishing Social Media Monitoring Impact Feedback Response

39. Communication – Multi-Agent • Communication requires at least 2 agents: a speaker and a listener • However, communication does not occur in a void – thus the initial model may never occur in real life as there may always be more than one listener or more than one agent. • More agents may be required when the communication receives responses from multiple listeners. • Communication • Active and reactive communication • Tracing the communication • Multi-channel switch • Multi-agent Multi-Channel Publishing Social Media Monitoring

40. Communication –Communication Patterns In software engineering, a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations. So patterns are formalized best practices that you must implement yourself in your application. Based on this definition of Software design patterns we introduce at this point the idea of the communication patterns. Software Design Patterns Communication Patterns

41. Communication – Communication Patterns • The communication patterns could be a way to facilitate the response phase of an enterprise. • A rich set of communication paradigms that address different types of issues by describing workflows of interaction with customers or potential customers. • It should be a dynamic set of patterns in the sense that it is being extended and altered continuously according to the needs of the customers and the nature of the issues that are arising.

42. Communication –Communication Patterns

43. Communication –Communication Patterns The Who dimension • For any feedback item that is available, someone in the enterprise should be responsible to interact with the customer or theuser that gave that feedback or disseminated something related to the brand, products and services of the enterprise. • It is crucial for the enterprise to respond via the appropriate employee to the user. To achieve this the enterprise should have a decent mechanism that could figure out in a semi-automatic way they needs of the user by relying on the content of user’s feedback.

44. Communication –Communication Patterns The What dimension • The What dimension mostly refers to the process of content adaptation. Content adaptation is the action of transforming content to adapt to the needs of the user. Thus, the responsible person (who is specified from the Who dimension) should be able to adapt the existing content, which is available and related to the user’s issue. • Furthermore, there are cases that the response should be different than a reply to the user. Various actions should be taken in order to support and help the user.

45. Communication –Communication Patterns The What dimension – Example scenario “Hotel” • A customer faces a problem with the hygiene of his room and tweets about that. • The listening procedures of the hotel capture that tweet and the administrator assigns the issue to the responsible person, who is dealing with the customer services. • The responsible employee contacts the customer at his room and asks him if is everything as it should be and in case there is any problem, they could fix it immediately. An alternative could be to contact the customer and propose him an inspection and a second cleaning session within the next minutes/hours to fix the issue that was publicly disseminated.

46. Communication –Communication Patterns The Where dimension • The response of the enterprise to the content of the user, which was spread in the web sphere should be done not only via the appropriate person that could adapt the content in the right way, but it should be realized through the correct medium. • That could be the medium that was used by the user or any other way, which is considered to be more appropriate. • Moreover, there is the possibility to switch between the available mediums (social networks, phone, email, etc.)

47. Communication –Communication Patterns The When dimension • This parameter reflects the appropriate response time of the enterprise in the bi-directional communication with the user. • The enterprise should be ready enough in order to respond and support the users within the most efficient time span, which depends on the type of the input. • An hierarchy model is needed in order to sort theopen issues according to the importance of thediscussion for the enterprise. This depends on: • Popularity of the user in the action field of the enterprise • The importance of the issue • Existing data regarding the issue and the user

48. Communication –Communication Patterns The Why dimension • The enterprise should have a set of criteria that could help them decide if a post in the web sphere should be taken in consideration and should be replied or not. • There are some types of posts that the enterprise does not gain any added value by responding. Some of the criteria could be: • Is that person an influencer and active in the area of the enterprise? • Does the post need a reply? (e.g. if it is an online discussion between 2 people, it would be annoying to pop-up in the discussion with the official account of the enterprise.) • Is there any decent answer to the problem or by jumping into the discussion it would be uncomfortable for the enterprise?

49. Communication – Summary of Components and Functionalities

50. Communication • Active and reactive communication • Tracing the communication • Multi-channel switch • Multi-agent • Communication Patterns Multi-Channel Publishing Social Media Monitoring Impact Feedback Response