Seentags is a service that helps extract accurate information from text reports.
The Challenge
Many people want to report data via text message, Twitter and other short messaging channels, but users find it hard to remember and accurately type information consistently in the same way every time. People have a hard time following rigid syntax structures because it’s not how they intuitively think.
What you really need is something that eliminates the need to use complex or consistent reporting structures in order to have the message understood.
What is Seentags?
Seentags is a free and open source application that uses a combination of algorithms that ‘forgives’ many common mistakes in data being sent — such as the use of separators, ordering of fields, etc. The application also allows the user to provide feedback to train Seentags so that it correctly interprets new report formats that may not comply with the original specification. In essence, you can teach Seentags how to understand your incoming data.
How Does Seentags Work?
Seentags accepts incoming text messages and breaks the contents up into categories, without requiring you to tell the system in advance what your categories are. Once the information is in the Seentags system, the user can provide feedback to ‘train’ Seentags so that it learns to correctly interpret new report formats. With a built in pattern detector, you only need to tell the system what category the text is one time before it does it automatically with all future messages as well as correcting all previous entries. Text separators such as commas, dashes or periods are no longer needed in order to define, categorize and organize incoming information. Seentags automatically puts your data into a CSV file that you can then export for your future needs.
Features
- free and open source
- pattern recognition that ‘learns’ how to identify incoming information
- automatic error detection and correction
- ability to download data to a CSV file
Benefits
- eliminates the need for time consuming trainings
- eliminates the need for reporting structures to be consistent in order to be understood
- eliminates the need to change user behaviors
- quickly set up new reporting systems without having to define categories in advance
- flexible and forgiving with errors
