Office Automation Systems that are "Programmed" by their Users

To be highly useful, office automation systems require customization to individual users, work environments, and tasks. We consider the question of whether office automation systems can be developed that allow users who are not skilled programmers to easily “program”, or customize, these tools themselves. In other words, can we deploy very general, non-customized programs that can be extended and adapted during usage? Besides the well-known knowledge acquisition and automated learning methods we propose an approach called dialog-based learning (DBL), that allows the user to teach the system directly while performing the task. It acquires knowledge through a dialog in which the user both illustrates the procedure using a grounded example, and provides instructions about how to perform the task in the general case. We focus discussion on CAP II (a program that schedules meetings by negotiation via email), and on RAP (a program that makes room reservation via email).