Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Carey Tanner

William James Whalen

Matthew Wetmore

Rahul Gupta

Daniel Joseph Giambalvo

Ullattil Shaji

Nicole Ashley Hamilton

Kenneth A Showman

David B Dehghan

Nirmal Rajesh Soy

Jay Thaler

Dennis Craig Marl

Derek C Y Cheng

Thomas Alan Sponheim

Quan Wang

Renan Jeffereis

Kristopher J Owens

Mike A Treit, Jr

William P McDaniel

An application programming interface (API) for administering the distribution of software updates on an update service node is presented. The API provides a plurality of interface calls through which an administrator can establish rules by which software updates available to the update service node are distributed.

Application programming interface for administering the distribution of software updates in an update distribution system

A system and method for managing group policy objects in a network, including interfaces that allow access by programs or a user interface component to functions of a group policy management console that performs management tasks on group policy objects and other related objects. The interfaces abstract the underlying data storage and retrieval, thereby facilitating searching for objects, and providing the ability to delegate, view, change and permissions on those objects, and check and save those permissions. Modeling and other test simulations are facilitated by other interfaces. Other interfaces provide dynamic and interactive features, such as to convey progress and rich status messages, and allow canceling of an ongoing operation. Still other interfaces provide methods for operating on group policy related data, including group policy object backup, restore, import, copy and create methods, and methods for linking group policy objects to scope of management objects.

Interfaces and methods for group policy management

Provided are support mechanisms for a user interface mechanism that performs group policy management. The support mechanisms include a context menu map that provides a consistent and efficient way to generate interactive context menus for nodes using only straightforward declarations. The declarations are processed to invoke code with corresponding parameters that in turn generates a data structure corresponding to a context menu that is to be displayed. The data structure is processed into another data structure, from which data is extracted to meet the requirements of a hosting management application. An intermediary communications object is provided to separate the user interface into multiple components which each exchange data. A progress dialog is also provided to update the user as to the progress of lengthy operations performed on various managed objects, and to drive those operations. Refresh logic replicates changes made at one location in the user interface to other nodes.

Support mechanisms for improved group policy management user interface

A user interface is disclosed for representing group policy object topology and relationships, while allowing interaction to facilitate group policy management. Forests, sites and domains are hierarchically displayed in a treeview that reflects the network topology. The treeview also represents group policy objects, links, filters and other nodes. Administrators perform operations across forests, domains and sites, and perform operations on other nodes in the treeview. Administrators control which forests, sites and domains are viewable in the treeview, and the treeview state is persisted. Logic automatically reduces the topology's complexity by limiting the presentation of forests and/or domains to only those with which the administrator's forest and domain have a proper trust relationship. Also provided is a tabbed view in a result pane area that provides a rich display of complex data, and intelligent refresh logic to update changes in one user interface area to other user interface areas.

Method and system for representing group policy object topology and relationships

Growing community of inventors

Gold Bar, WA, United States of America

Carey Tanner