Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Brian G O'Connor

Prakash Sikchi

Rahul Nigam

Amol Shrikrishna Kelkar

Chandramouleeswaran Krishnaswamy

Nathaniel Stott

Alessandro Catorcini

Mark Raymond Gilbert

Arungundram C Narendran

Peter Kenneth Harwood

Zohar Raz

Divyachapan Sridharan Padur

Jianfeng Cai

Mustafaraj M Dhrolia

Silviu Ifrim

Lee B Rosenberg

Jun Zhang

Jonathan David Perlow

Andrey Shur

Shiraz Jitendra Cupala

Edward George Essey

Jonathan E Rivers-Moore

Kamaljit S Bath

Parminder Pal Singh

Roshane Silva

Pritvinath Obla

Min Shao

Alexandru Croicu

Phillip I Beish

Sundar Paranthaman

Rafiq El Alami

Kalpita Deobhakta

Ranjan Aggarwal

David Airapetyan

Donald Allen Reamey

Claudio Caldato

Morten Haavaldsen

Nandakishor Basavanthappa

Bryan Short

A method of and system for selecting users for a rollout process of a feature is carried out by receiving an indication of the rollout process for the feature being rolled out, accessing a rollout plan, the rollout plan including a plurality of stages for the rollout process, and selecting users from a user population for each of the plurality of stages of the rollout process. Selecting the users from a user population includes examining a property to determine if a user in the user population is indicated as opted into being a late-stage receiver, and upon determining that the user is opted into being the late-stage receiver, excluding the user from the user population for one or more early stages of the rollout and including the user into the user population in one or more late stages of the rollout process.

Method and system for selection of users in feature rollout

A system to reduce strain on server farm computing resources by over-riding 'off-peak' patching schedules in response to performance failures occurring on a server farm. Embodiments disclosed herein determine a patching schedule for causing builds of patches to be sequentially installed on server farms during an off-peak usage time-range. Responsive to a performance failure occurring on the server farm, embodiments disclosed herein identify a particular patch that is designed to resolve the performance failure. Then, the patching schedule is over-ridden to expedite an out-of-sequence installation of whichever build is first to include the particular patch. Because resolution of the performance failure is expedited, the impact of the performance failure on the computing resources of the server farm is reduced as compared to existing server farm patching systems.

Enhanced server farm patching system for enabling developers to override off-peak patching schedules

Orchestration of infrastructure service blocks (ISBs) within a hosted service may be automated. A datacenter deploying the hosted service may include one or more zones, each zone including at least a network and a server farm comprising one or more servers performing various roles within an infrastructure of the hosted service. A first orchestrator may receive a network and server manifest from the datacenter to be configured within an automation framework of the first orchestrator to create an ISB and/or update another ISB for each zone of the datacenter. The created ISB and/or updated other ISB may be deployed to a second orchestrator that may image the servers within each zone of the datacenter with the created ISB and/or updated other ISB. The hosted service may then be deployed at the datacenter such that the servers within each zone of the datacenter include the created ISB and/or updated other ISB.

Automated orchestration of infrastructure service blocks in hosted services

A cyclical patching process associated with a cloud application may be defined to ensure high availability (HA) of the cloud application in order to prevent impacting an availability to end users. A list of server identities corresponding to one or more servers of a datacenter hosting the cloud application may be accepted. HA metric values for each of the server identities may be determined in order to compute an overall HA metric value for the cloud application. A subset of the servers may be removed from a rotation framework of the cloud application based on the determined HA metric values, where the removal does not affect the overall HA metric value of the cloud application. One or more patches may be applied to each server within the subset of servers in parallel, and the subset of servers may be reinstated in the rotation framework of the cloud application.

Patch process ensuring high availability of cloud application

A system and method that enables promotion of data from within a structured data file to a library is described. This system and method can also enable demotion of data from a library to within a structured data file. Further, this system and method can copy data from a structured data file, perform a function on the copied data, and promote a result of the performed function to a library.

Promoting data from structured data files

Systems and/or methods enabling an individual to digitally sign data using an identifier where the data being digitally signed and the identifier are not accessed at the same location are described. In some cases, the systems and/or methods permit an individual to digitally sign data for an electronic document using an identifier inaccessible by a remote computer where the electronic document is rendered using view information from that remote computer. The systems and/or methods may also enable a network computer to send view information for, and a digital encoding of, an electronic document to a local computer effective to enable the local computer to digitally sign the electronic document by signing the digital encoding of electronic document.

Digital signatures for network forms

Architecture that introduces evaluation and decisionmaking (e.g., at the server) and allows a runtime decision to be made, on a per-request basis, as to where the data calculations will occur, on the server, on the client, or as a shared execution on both the server and the client. The decision can be made based on environment variables (e.g., permissions, network bandwidth, server load, etc.) of the user, for example. This approach provides performance tuning of a form by dynamically optimizing the location of execution of the code based on environment factors.

Dynamic postback for location code execution

Systems and/or methods that enable an operation associated with an altered structure of a data instance of a network form without first altering the structure of the data instance are described. These systems and/or methods, in one embodiment, enable an operation of a network form eventually requiring alteration of a structure of a data instance of the network form without first performing a roundtrip with the network form's network computer. In another embodiment, the systems and/or methods approximate a view and editing experience associated with a structural change to a data instance of a network form without structurally changing the data instance.

Structural editing operations for network forms

Systems and methods that enable execution of applications at appropriate trust levels are described. These systems and methods can determine appropriate trust levels by comparing applications' permitted trust levels with their requested trust levels. These systems and methods can determine applications' permitted trust levels by comparing applications' execution locations with their published locations. Applications can also be executed at a restricted trust level at which potentially dangerous operations are prohibited.

Executing applications at appropriate trust levels

Various embodiments can efficiently utilize form server resources by, in at least some embodiments, acting only on one tree during the form editing process. Various embodiments can act on a form's data and not necessarily a representation of the form's view. The described embodiments can support various different presentation formats.

Methods and systems for server side form processing

Systems and methods that enable execution of applications at appropriate trust levels are described. These systems and methods can determine appropriate trust levels by comparing applications' permitted trust levels with their requested trust levels. These systems and method can determine applications' permitted trust levels by comparing applications' execution locations with their published locations. Applications can also be executed at a restricted trust level at which potentially dangerous operations are prohibited.

Scalable object model design is described. In an embodiment, one or more objects corresponding to a form are instantiated in response to a request for the form from a first client device, and an events manager is instantiated through which the one or more objects register to process data manipulation events associated with the form. Data specific to the first client device is processed with the one or more objects that correspond to the form via a first processor thread. An additional request from a second client device is received and additional data specific to the second client device is processed with the one or more objects that correspond to the form via a second processor thread. The one or more objects are shared by the first client device and the second client device to process the data manipulation events associated with the form.

Scalable object model

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Brian G O'Connor