Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Alexander Darrow

Joseph Patrick Masterson

Christina M Meyer

Punit Narendra Java

Eric S Hamilton

Marcelo Daniel Truffat

Zhaoqing Ma

Nathan Gunderson

Steve Chang

Leslie Cindy Chen

Philip Zhian Loh

Eran Shtiegman

Shahil Soni

Darren Alexander Apfel

Kenneth Fern

Elena Catrinescu

Arulkumar Elumalai

Sumit Garg

Rebecca Jean Lawler

George Arthur Herbert, Iii

Scott A Plette

Girija Bhagavatula

Aspects of the present disclosure relate to systems and methods for assigning tasks to collaborators of a file through a contextual action. In one aspect, rendering of a file within an email application including a reading pane may be initiated. A task object may be created based on an input made with respect to the file. A reference point associated with the task object may be created within the file. The task object may be assigned to at least one collaborator of the file via the email application.

Task assignment from a file through a contextual action

Extraction and provision of message identification information to a productivity application for enabling the productivity application to provide an embedded communication experience in association with an attachment file is provided. A message including an attachment is received via a messaging application. Upon receiving a selection to open the attachment from within the messaging application, the attachment file is opened in a productivity application, and various parameters associated with the message are extracted. A path including the various parameters is constructed and passed to a productivity application, thus allowing the productivity application to provide a persisted conversation in a user interface of the productivity application for viewing of and interaction with the conversation.

Opening an attachment and conversation from a messaging application

A document history interface provides a visual document history. In particular, document history application provides for tracking, storing and presenting events occurring over a document lifecycle to provide a robust interface for visualizing and accessing the document's history. In aspects, an interactive document timeline with a scroll control is provided to roll back through the document history. The interactive document timeline includes visual indicators for events that occurred during the document lifecycle, including but not limited to authoring events, communication events, and document branching events. A play control is further provided with the interactive document timeline such that a time-lapse rendition of events occurring over the document history may be displayed. In some aspects, upon scrolling to particular points along the interactive document timeline, legacy versions of the document may be saved as new documents.

Document history interface

A single communication application can display an initial modality view associated with the group communication on a canvas of a communication application user interface. The initial modality view can be one of multiple available views. The single communication application can receive a selection to display a different from the initial modality view. Each active user in the group communication can be on a different computing device with different active instances of the single communication application which are each configured to switch independently of each other active instances of the single communication application running on different computing devices to modality views that are different from the initial modality view. The communication application can display the selected modality view on the canvas by transitioning from the initial modality view.

Managing modality views on conversation canvas

A communication application displays a modality view that may be one of a collaboration, a gallery, or a messaging view on a conversation canvas. The application may display an initial view according a modality selection by the user. A user is enabled to select a next view from the set by providing a user action such as a tap, swipe action, etc. The application dynamically generates the next modality view according to the initial view. Common participants and common contexts are used to configure the next view. Subsequent to configuration, the application displays the next modality view on the conversation canvas by transitioning from the initial view. The application retains session information from the initial view to restore the initial view session if the user selects to return to the initial view.

Call forwarding profiles corresponding to call forwarding settings based on time, location, and/or presence states of a called party are created. Different call forwarding settings are then activated based on corresponding predefined call forwarding profiles. Users are enabled to pre-configure their call forwarding profiles based on one or more rules.

Managing call forwarding profiles

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Alexander Darrow