Description

Tailor allows end users to modify procedure definitions through short sentences describing the desired change. For example, given a definition of the procedure for purchasing a laptop within a company that includes getting bids for the laptop, getting authorization for the purchase and submitting the appropriate paper work, a desired modification might be expressed as "You don't need authorization when the cost is below $2000".

A system with the capability to follow instruction of this kind will allow more end users to change the procedure that is followed, but a number of challenges must be addressed to make this feasible. First, the system must understand the sentence as a precise modification to a portion of the procedural knowledge. This may require interpreting incompletely specified tasks or roles. For example, it is not clear what object's cost is referred to in the above sentence.

Second, because the procedure knowledge is interconnected, a modification like this may have a number of unintended ramifications. For example, if the authorization subtask is skipped in some situations, some later subtask that required it as a setup step may fail. Tailor should notice this when it can, and either take steps to repair the knowledge or warn the user and make suggestions for how to repair it.

The procedure knowledge is represented in the SPARK language and shown to the user with a simple language generation interface.

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