Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Alexander Coll

Yi Li

Yan Ke

Daniel Marantz

Florin Folta

Javier Garcia Flynn

Jingfeng Li

Richard Jungiang Qian

Venkat Sankepally

Subhojit Som

Ze Tian

Gregory Mark Hewett

Longfei Zhang

Representative embodiments allow private user created content to be submitted for a query so that a user can search from outside a corporate firewall and retrieve both private user created content and web content. The private user created content and web content are presented in the same user interface. Embodiments allow users to create content and keep a private content index that allows such content to be retrieved with an appropriate query along with public web content. Embodiments allow feedback on the user content to be submitted. Feedback can be used for quality control and other purposes. Some user created content has an expiration date after which the content will not be retrieved. Some embodiments place the private index within a compliance boundary and results are returned from within the compliance boundary directly to a browser so the search system has no access to the private data.

Private content in search engine results

Web search results and enterprise search results are combined into a single presentation. A search query is received from a user associated with a tenant of an enterprise cloud computing platform. Web search results are retrieved based on the search query. The Web search results are ranked and sent to the search engine user interface. An intent of the search query is determined. It is determined that the search query is related to the tenant's enterprise data. An instruction containing the search query keywords and intent is sent to the search engine user interface, and is configured to cause the search engine user interface to submit the keywords intent to an enterprise search engine within the enterprise cloud computing platform. A content template is communicated to the search engine user interface. The content template is configured to display enterprise search results received at the search engine user interface.

Blending enterprise content and web results

Methods, computer systems, and computer-storage media are provided for reference resolution. The present invention seeks to resolve entities in conversational search. To enable a more natural conversational search interaction, referential expressions such as pronouns are handled in queries. A component keeps track of previous queries and performs reference resolution based on an entity in the previous query and reformulates the query using an identifier for the referenced entity. Reference resolution may be performed for pronouns, plural pronouns, partial names, across domains, and on any device or platform.

Reference resolution

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Alexander Coll