Framework for text-based conversational user-interface for business applications

Business application systems traditionally have menu-driven interfaces (whether stand-alone or web-enabled etc.) that users operate on. However, such an interface can become rather cumbersome for users who want some data from the system, but do not know how to get it. Natural language based user-interface to business applications is one alternative. Further, as email and SMS based interactions becomes more ubiquitous, future business application systems may enable email and SMS based interfaces to their systems. This would entail a natural language interface to business applications. We describe a framework for text-based natural language conversational user-interface, for business applications. Our framework permits the user to carry out a dialog with the system in order to fetch relevant data and carry out various tasks of the system. The framework uses semantic web based ontology of the domain, to aid in the retrieval of the relevant data and concepts from the system.