Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Amanda Giang-Tien Nguyen

Feng Yue

Albert Leon Ting

Khaled Salah Sedky

Daniel Emerson

Michael P Fenelon

Benjamin Kuhn

Ivan Pavicevic

A job completion architecture, includes content that is specified as a hierarchical tree of related content units and a set of multilevel tickets associated with instances of the hierarchically arranged content units. The job manager applies the multilevel tickets, specifying property settings at potentially multiple levels within the hierarchical tree, according to a qualified inheritance rule wherein settings applicable to a set of lower level properties that are specified within a first (higher level) ticket are incorporated into the merged settings to the extent a second (lower level) ticket does not specify settings for the set of lower level properties. If a same property is specified in both a higher and lower level ticket, during merging a setting specified in the lower level ticket overrides the higher level ticket setting.

Multilevel ticket-based job management architecture for computing devices

A system and method for automatic configuration upon installation of a network printer are disclosed. The techniques of the invention avoid the burden of manual configuration by users and system administrators. The network printer is associated with printer description files, a driver, a spooler, and a port monitor. The system comprises bi-directional application program interfaces associated with the spooler for allowing the driver to generate a bi-directional request and receive a bi-directional response. The system additionally includes a syntax within the printer description files for representing and associating the bi-directional request and the bi-directional response with a print feature. The system also includes extension files stored in the driver for relating bi-directional values and printer values and a notification infrastructure controlled by the port monitor for providing a bi-directional notification of configuration changes to the driver and selected applications.

System and method for automatic configuration

A print architecture, including a print manager interposed between an application and a set of installed filters that complete features associated with submitted print jobs, includes an integrated data tree that stores a composite of the features and printer personalities supported by the print system including the installed filters. Properties/behaviors of components of the print architecture, including installed print filters and job tickets, are specified in accordance with an XML-based print schema. A print manager interface facilitates parsing and incorporating feature completion capabilities supported by the installed filters. A capabilities interface presents the features supported by the filters, organized in the form of feature descriptors. In addition to designating feature properties, the feature descriptors designate an order in which a print request is passed through ones of the installed filters to complete the features identified in a print job ticket derived from the feature properties of the feature descriptor.

Print management architecture for computing devices having a set of filters functions wherein the functions are prevented from conflicting with one another

The present invention is a system and method for providing distributed seamless, fault tolerant and reliable solutions for imaging devices through creating virtual imaging servers and virtual connections to network imaging devices. This invention provides imaging job routing, job balancing, continuous service availability, simplified imaging device administration and the transparency of imaging device locations and name on a network by employing a hierarchical schema which defines and describes imaging devices, servers and imaging jobs.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Amanda Giang-Tien Nguyen