Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Chandresh Kumar Jain

Mayank Mehta

Frank Byrum

Michael Nelte

Mihai Costea

Wilbert De Graaf

Edward Thomas Banti

Gregory Kostal

Vladimir Yarmolenko

Daniel Dwight Longley

Ladislau Conceicao

Massimiliano Ciccotosto

Brian Kress

Yuhui Zhong

Pankaj Mohan Kamat

Tejas Patel

William Hart Holmes

Chris Barnes

Greg Gourevitch

James H Baker

Malcolm Erik Pearson

Neel Suresh Joshi

Victor Boctor

Scott C Cottrille

Hao Zhang

Eric Dean Tribble

Amit Fulay

Krassimir Emilov Karamfilov

Nathan Waddoups

Christopher Barnes

Paul David Tischhauser

Mayerber L Carvalho Neto

James R Knibb

Ayse Yesim Koman

Anant Trivedi

Sunitha Samuel

Lamia Benmouffok

Techniques enable contextually-aware selections of event forums. Scheduling data can be analyzed to identify a context associated with an appointment. A forum that is appropriate for the identified context can be selected and utilized. The analysis can also utilize traffic data, map data, weather data, user preferences, and other contextual data to select one or more forums. A forum can be a place or communication medium. A service provider can associate one or more forums with a particular skill set. For example, a legal office can associate an online forum, such a videoconference, with a first category of services, and an on-site location for a second category of services. Depending on a category of services identified in one or more user preferences and/or meeting requests, a forum can be selected. Other factors, which may include weather conditions, traffic conditions, and commute times can also influence the selection of a forum.

Contextually-aware selection of event forums

Techniques of intelligent management of calendar items in computing systems are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a calendar server can be configured to determine whether to accept a requested meeting utilizing a decision tree pre-configured at the server by a service provider. The decision tree contains one or more hierarchical decision nodes individually comparing one or more of parameters provided by a meeting requester to a corresponding criterion previously provided by the service provider. The calendar server can also be configured to invoke an application identified in the decision tree and provide results of the invoked application to the meeting requester in lieu of accepting the requested meeting.

Intelligent management of electronic calendar items

An email security system is described that allows users within different organizations to securely send email to one another. The email security system provides a federation server on the Internet or other unsecured network accessible by each of the organizations. Each organization provides identity information to the federation server. When a sender in one organization sends a message to a recipient in another organization, the federation server provides the sender's email server with a secure token for encrypting the message to provide secure delivery over the unsecured network.

Secure message delivery using a trust broker

A perimeter network may be utilized to filter electronic mail messages destined for an internal network. A computer may be utilized to monitor an electronic mail mailbox for changes to a safe recipients list and/or a blocked senders list. The computer may further be utilized to automatically copy the safe recipients list and/or the blocked senders list to a network directory in the internal network. The computer may further be utilized to automatically send the safe recipients list and/or the blocked senders list to a network directory in the perimeter network for utilization by one or more agents executing on a computer in the perimeter network. The one or more agents may be configured to utilize the safe recipients list and/or the blocked senders list to filter electronic mail messages received by the perimeter network which are destined for delivery to the internal network.

Filtering of electronic mail messages destined for an internal network

Business to business secure mail may be provided. Consistent with embodiments of the invention, a protected message may be received. The recipient may request a token from a trust broker, submit the token to an authorization server associated with the sender, receive a user license from the authorization server; and decrypt the protected message using the user license. The protected message may restrict actions that may be taken by the recipient, such as forwarding to other users.

Business to business secure mail

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for separating authorization identity from policy enforcement identity. Embodiments of the invention extend the consumption phase for protected information. Two identities, an authorization identity and a policy enforcement identity, are used for acquiring, issuing and enforcing usage license instead of one identity certificate. The authorization identity is used to evaluate against usage policy. The authorization identity is similar to identification information in an identity certificate. The policy enforcement identity is used to ensure the confidentiality of granted permissions and content key. The policy enforcement identity enforces a usage license on an authorization principal's (e.g., recipient's) machine. The policy enforcement identity's enforcement of a usage license is similar use of a cryptographic key in an identity certificate.

Separating authorization identity from policy enforcement identity

Propagating messaging preferences of one or more users from a recipient mailbox to a perimeter network administering e-mail content blocking and routing. A content filtering application located outside a trusted network receives messaging preferences information from within the trusted network regarding the mail recipients. This messaging preferences information may be utilized to allow certain pre-authorized messages from particular senders to bypass content filtering. Moreover, the messaging preferences information may be hashed to further protect the information on the perimeter network and to speed in review and comparison of the messaging preferences information. In addition, other types of user-specific information may be propagated to the perimeter network for use with other applications other than messaging.

Perimeter message filtering with extracted user-specific preferences

Journaling e-mail messages, containing information about an e-mail message and/or entities associated with the e-mail messages, are sent to journaling mailboxes. An e-mail server sends an original journaling e-mail message, preferably through an envelope protocol extension, to an entity's journaling mailbox. Upon detecting additional recipients of the e-mail message (e.g. an expansion of a distribution list or alternate recipient forwarding rule) the e-mail server sends an additional journaling e-mail message, containing information about the additional recipients, to the entity's journaling mailbox.

Methods for sending additional journaling e-mail messages subsequent to sending original journaling e-mail messages

E-mail envelope journaling. A server determines that an entity's (e.g., a recipient revealed from an expanded distribution list) home mailbox store has envelope journaling enabled and specifies a journaling mailbox address. The server sets a journaling property in an e-mail message identifying that the e-mail message is to be journaled. The server adds the journaling mailbox address specified by the entity's home mailbox store to the journaling property. The server sends envelope journaling information through an envelope protocol extension to the journaling mailbox addresses specified in the journaling property. The server sends the e-mail message to one or more recipients specified in the e-mail message and journaling mailbox addresses specified in the journaling property. Journaling servers receiving envelope journaling information, place journaling information in archive messages, and attach portions e-mail messages to archive messages.

Envelope e-mail journaling with best effort recipient updates

Growing community of inventors

Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Chandresh Kumar Jain