Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Brian W Boon

Howard J Dickerman

Shibani Basava

Xin Shi

Ram Kumar Donthula

Dinesh Chandnani

Shaun Miller

Andrew Christopher Neil

Zhu Chen

Vijaya K Upadya

Matthew Sloan Theodore Evans

Geoffrey Staneff

Evgenia Steshenko

Carl Brochu

Charles David Ellis

Robert G Hawking

Alexander Martynov

Kaicheng Hu

Patrick J King

A rule-based attribution mechanism analyzes documents having different types of data in different formats through the application of script-based rules that apply a tag to the document identifying the type of sensitive data that is contained in the document. Documents having similar tags are aggregated so that the sensitive data is scrubbed from the document leaving the telemetric data available for downstream processing. The scrubbing entails different actions, such as, eliminating the sensitive data, obfuscating the sensitive data, and converting the sensitive data into a non-sensitive value.

Rule-based document scrubbing of sensitive data

Cube functions may be used to obtain data from a multidimensional database. The cube functions may be contained within one or more cells of a spreadsheet. These cube functions behave similarly to the standard functions that may be included within a spreadsheet. Exemplary cube functions include obtaining: a cube member, a cube value, a cube set, a ranked member, a KPI, a member property and a count relating to a set. The cube functions within the spreadsheet may access the cube data from one or more multidimensional databases. Using the cube formulas in individual cells allows the user to add/delete rows and/or columns from within the spreadsheet.

Multidimensional cube functions

Embodiments of present application treat Connection Information Files contained in an instance of an application, such as a workbook, as independent objects and multiple data objects, such as data summary tables, may link to one Connection Information File. Maintaining Connection Information Files as independent objects within an instance of an application provides the ability to modify a connection to an external data source and have that modification applied to all linked data objects without having to modify each data object individually. Additionally, a user may view a complete list of all Connection Information Files that exist within a workbook and easily add, delete, or modify those Connection Information Files.

Management of connections to external data

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Brian W Boon