Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Other

Amit Kumar

Shajib Sadhukha

Zhaowei Charlie Jiang

Milind V Mahajan

Michael William O'Connor

Li Jiang

Michael Van Snellenberg

Steven William Macbeth

Douglas Brent Schmaltz

Maria Furman

Paul A Viola

Yordan Ivanov Rouskov

Sanaz Ahari

Dachuan Zhang

Michael H Kim

Ryan Charles Hill

Barn-Wan Li

Robert L C Parker

Sara Melanie Brown

Ke-Cheng Huang

Ashley L Morgan

Robert Parker

Sriram Dhanasekaran

Jean-Marc Prieur

Steve Macbeth

Sissie Ling-le

Dorde Krecar

A policy engine validates one or more security tokens in an authenticated request using a sequence of partial policy validations. Multiple policies may be applied to the security token using the work product generated from each failed policy. The policy that succeeds in validating the security token has a portion of its work performed through previously-failed policies that did not complete successfully. In this manner, the validation of a policy is performed faster and more efficiently since the previous processing is not repeated whenever a new policy is applied.

Security token validation using partial policy validations

Among other things, one or more techniques and/or systems for facilitating task completion through inter-application communication and/or for registering a target application for contextually aware task execution are provided. That is, a current application may display content comprising an entity (e.g., a mapping application may display a restaurant entity). One or more actions capable of being performed on the entity may be exposed (e.g., a reserve table action). Responsive to selection of an action, one or more target applications capable of performing the action on the entity may be presented. Responsive to selection of a target application, contextual information for the entity and/or the action may be passed to the target application so that the target application may be launched in a contextually relevant state to facilitate completion of a task. For example, a dinning application may be launched to a table reservation form for the restaurant entity.

Task completion through inter-application communication

Methods for hardening security between web services using protected forwarded access tokens are implemented via systems and devices. User applications receive user tokens with user information from an identity provider and provide the user tokens to first services with data requests. Each first service extracts and transforms a portion of a user token to validate a user token signature, and determines a target service for the data request. The first services acquire actor tokens from the identity provider that uniquely identify the first services using public keys, and then generate authentication tokens, signed with corresponding private keys, that encapsulate the actor tokens and the transformed user tokens. The signed authentication tokens are provided to target services which validate the authentication tokens as well as the encapsulated tokens and their respective signatures. Upon validation, requested data is retrieved and provided back for the user applications from the target services.

System and method for hardening security between web services using protected forwarded access tokens

Methods, computer systems, and computer-storage media are provided for augmenting Web-based search results with relevant content received from third-party applications. Each of a plurality of third-party applications is registered to obtain an indication of entity types associated with the each registered third-party application. A user input including at least a search query is received. The search query is communicated to those third-party applications that are identified as being relevant to the search query. Search results that are relevant to the user input are received from the relevant third-party applications and are presented on a results page.

Augmenting search results with relevant third-party application content

Among other things, one or more techniques and/or systems are provided for facilitating the completion of a user task. That is, user intent (e.g., intentions of a user to perform a user task) may be identified. The user intent may comprise an entity (e.g., a movie entity) and/or an action (e.g., an order movie tickets action) that the user wants to perform on the entity. A provider list may be created based upon one or more providers capable of performing the action on the entity (e.g., a movie application may be capable of performing the order movie tickets action on the movie entity). Providers may be dynamically selected for inclusion within the provider list at run-time. For example, an open market of providers may be maintained (e.g., providers may be added, removed, and/or updated over time), such that providers may be selected from the open market to complete user tasks.

User task completion via open market of actions and/or providers

Applications are surfaced to a user during browsing without requiring a specific search by the user. The applications can be selected for surfacing to the user based on the network address entered into the address bar of a browser, the content of the page corresponding to the network address, or a combination thereof. Applications may be selected for surfacing based on a partial address entered into the address bar and/or based on the web page content that is currently visible in the browser display.

Surfacing applications based on browsing activity

An application ('app') may be associated with a web site, so that an online service may use the connection between the app and the web site. In one example, the online service is an information provider, such as a search engine or advertising engine. The online service provides a web administrator portal, through which a webmaster provides or generates a secret code. The webmaster gives the secret code to an app developer, who gives the code to an app store when the app is published. If the service provides information about the web site (e.g., as a search result or ad impression), the service may also provide an indication of the app, since the use of the code represents confirmation by both the webmaster and app developer that a relationship exists between the web site and the app.

Connection between app and web site

Among other things, one or more techniques and/or systems for providing a third party app through an email user interface are provided. That is, an email user interface may provide access to an email comprising email content (e.g., a message regarding meeting for dinner at the Emerald Tavern). The email content may be analyzed to identify an entity referenced by the email content (e.g., an Emerald Tavern entity). A user intent to accomplish a task may be determined based upon the entity. An action that may be performed to accomplish the task, and a third party app capable of performing the action may be presented through the email user interface (e.g., a restaurant reservation app capable of a reservation task). Responsive to selection of the third party app, the third party app may be executed within the email user interface without transitioning a user away from the immersive email experience.

Task completion in email using third party app

Methods, computer systems, and computer-storage media are provided for augmenting Web-based search results with relevant content received from third-party applications. Each of a plurality of third-party applications is registered to obtain an indication of entity types associated with the each registered third-party application. An annotated search query is received that includes the original inputted search query and at least an entity type associated with the search query. The annotated search query is communicated to those third-party applications having an indicated entity type that matches the entity type associated with the inputted search query. Search results that are relevant to the annotated search query are received from the applications and presented on a results page.

Computer-readable media, computer systems, and computing methods are provided for discovering applications using phone-number information. Initially, an application uploaded to an application marketplace is targeted. Phone numbers associated with the targeted application are discovered by identifying attributes of the targeted application from metadata associated therewith in the application marketplace, and identifying the phone numbers that reach at least one business affiliated with the targeted application or are relevant to the identified attributes of the targeted application. The associated phone numbers are mapped to the targeted application and maintained within an application manifest. Upon detecting user-initiated call-based operation(s) at a client device, the phone number(s) involved in the call-based operation(s) are compared against the application manifest to determine relevant applications. The relevant applications are distributed to the client device for presentation within a phone-number context, such as placing an outgoing call, receiving an incoming call, or reviewing a call-history log.

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Amit Kumar