Automated dialog systems are used to provide assistance and information in a computing environment. Examples of automated dialog systems include personal assistant solutions such as Siri from Apple, Inc., Google Now and Microsoft Cortana. These personal assistant solutions return information to a user promptly upon request using voice-oriented dialog technology. In this context, particular computational components (or bots) integrated to either a voice-oriented or text-based dialog system can be programmed to provide assistance and information upon the detection of certain situations, conditions or events in the communication, e.g., in Slack a preconfigured bot user may show a link about ‘agile’ when a user message contains this word. Most voice or text activated assistance systems provide information based on user-initiated request, i.e., like Apple Siri. Alternatively, requests can be system-initiated, e.g., Slack bots or combination of system-initiated and user-initiated, e.g., Google Allo.
For system-initiated requests, unsolicited assistance and information, while valuable, is delivered to users as soon as the system detects a need and computes such unsolicited assistance and information. The traditional systems that generate unsolicited assistance and information do not take into account the flow of an ongoing discourse or conversation among involved parties or whether the unsolicited assistance and information can in fact disrupt the ongoing conversation. Therefore, automated dialog systems are desired that provide system-initiated assistance and information while limiting the adverse effects of unsolicited assistance and information.