Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Boaz Chen

Shahar Prish

Yoav Yassour

Liviu Asnash

Adi Regev

Khalid Awwad

Ella Lesser

Itay Demri

John S Campbell

Eran Megiddo

Daniel C Battagin

Haroon Ahmed

Robert M Bruckner

Yariv Ben-Tovim

Andriy Garbuzov

Yury Berezansky

Juraj Slugen

Silvio Susskind

Vit Karas

Dmitry Datsenko

Various aspects of triggering and controlling workflows are disclosed, where a workflow processes data across a plurality of services by performing a predefined operation using predefined parameters when triggered by a predefined input. Specifically, the various aspects include providing access control for workflows triggered using button sharing, encoding workflows and scanning encoded workflows to trigger workflows, using security badges and access control systems used at workplaces to trigger workflows, and enabling workflows to extract information from mobile devices and using the information for subsequent processing.

Triggering and controlling workflows across applications and services used in cloud computing systems

Various technologies pertaining to modifying visualizations are described herein. A client computing device requests a visualization from a server computing device, and the server computing device constructs the visualization responsive to receipt of the request. The server computing device further identifies anticipated transformations for the visualization, and transmits the visualization and the transformations to the client computing device. The client computing device displays the visualization, and responsive to receipt of a request to modify the visualization, executes a transformation provided by the server computing device to update the visualization.

Pre-fetch cache for visualization modification

A named object view of a report is generated from an electronic data file. Objects in the file to be published are identified in the file. A named object view of the report associated with the file is generated by displaying published identified objects according to associated viewing rights. A viewer at a client is presented with the named object view of the report, according to the viewing rights, such that the viewer's attention is focused on the published objects.

Named object view of electronic data report

Multi-threaded access to a collection is synchronized without locking the collection for long periods of time. In one implementation, a collection is locked briefly to allow safe creation of a resource entry (or a placeholder entry) in the collection and then unlocked prior to the start of the resource build operation. As such, the collection is unlocked during the potentially long period of time required to build the resource (e.g., a data object) into the collection. Furthermore, during the build operation, access attempts to the same resource in the collection by other threads are forced to wait until the resource build is completed. Nevertheless, the collection itself is not locked during the resource build operation, so that other threads can access other resources within the collection without waiting.

Synchronizing shared resources in a collection

A server application discovers its relevant data objects and generates a report of the current states of such objects at a moment in time that is relevant to a detected failure. Responsive to a request for a server application state, the application can identify root objects; discover data types, values, and related objects through recursive traversal and analysis of the object hierarchies; and generate a state description of the application for review and analysis by others. The state discovery may be synchronized among multiple threads to ensure that the state description represents a snapshot of the server application state and a single point in its execution. The state description can be analyzed by validation tools to detect where the error might exist in the application and how the error might be corrected.

Server application state

Items that are in use are maintained in a used item store. Items that are no longer in use are placed in an unused items store. When an item that is not currently in use is requested again, an attempt is made to retrieve the item from the unused item store. Retrieving the item from the unused items store can save a tremendous amount of time since the object does not need to be recalculated again when it is requested. Items may be evicted from the unused item store based on the system resources available. When it has been determined that an item(s) should be evicted, an eviction score is calculated for each unused item. Items are then evicted from the unused item store based on their eviction score. Generally items that are larger in size, took less time to calculate, have not been accessed as frequently, and have not been referenced recently, are the first ones to be evicted from unused items store.

Determining when to evict unused items from storage

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Boaz Chen