Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Danny Levin

Amer A Hassan

Bradford R Clark

Amritansh Raghav

Tim M Moore

Mahendra D Sekaran

Parag Samdadiya

Rajesh Ramanathan

Omar Aftab

Nikhil P Bobde

Wei Zhong

Sonu Arora

Dalibor Kukoleca

Li Shen

Anton W Krantz

Warren Vincent Barkley

Eran Shtiegman

Vadim Eydelman

Russell Andrew Penar

Bimal Kumar Mehta

Sankaran Narayanan

Gurdeep Singh Pall

Xu Bin Liu

Paul D Tidwell

Yiu-Ming Leung

Roy D Kuntz

Ankur Chavda

Arulkumar Elumalai

Guo-Wei Shieh

Sumit Garg

Vinit Deshpande

Michael R VanBuskirk

Marc Boyer

Vijay Manian

Jisun Park

Vincent Allio

Zong Zong Yuan

Jay Herbison

Haoran Zheng

Russell P Bennett

Amer Aref Hassan

Online content is served to participant devices using two or more systems. The content served by each system is not the same. Rather, the content streams coming from each system is a partial or lower-quality version of the original high-quality version of the content stream. A single one of the partial data streams can be used by the participant device to output a lower-quality version of the original content stream to the user. Alternately, the received partial content streams can be combined to output, to the user, a high-quality version of the original content stream.

Concurrent serving of a media stream

Disclosed are methods and systems for selecting a host facility for a communications session for a group of devices. In one aspect, a method includes partitioning the devices into multiple clusters. Each cluster is associated with a respective host facility that is estimated to provide each device in the respective cluster a specified quality requirement during the communication session. The method also includes accessing a weighting value for each cluster of the different clusters based on one or more attributes of the devices in each respective cluster of the different clusters, and selecting a group host facility, from the host facilities associated with the clusters based on the weighting value of each respective cluster and a predefined criterion, the group host facility to host the communication session for the devices.

Host selection for a media flow

Techniques for host facility assignment for a conferencing session are described. Generally, a conferencing session refers to an exchange of communication media between communication endpoints. Accordingly to various embodiments, multiple different host facilities are available for hosting a conferencing session. Further to techniques described herein, a host facility from the different available host facilities is selected to perform hosting duties for the conferencing session. In at least some implementations, a host facility that is estimated to provide a highest session quality for the conferencing session is selected to host the conferencing session.

Host facility assignment for a conferencing session

Examples discussed herein relate to a system including a first data processing system and a second data processing system. The first data processing system can be configured to receive a first partial media stream of a media stream split into at least the first partial media stream and a second partial media stream and send the first partial media stream to a device. The second data processing system can be configured to receive the second partial media stream and send the second partial media stream to the device.

Techniques for call handling between a cellular network and a communication service are described. In at least some embodiments, a call refers to a real-time exchange of communication media between different communication endpoints. According to one or more embodiments, techniques described herein determine whether to route a call over a cellular network or to transfer (e.g., hand over) the call from the cellular network to a communication service. This determination can be made based on various policies that consider different call-related criteria.

Call handling between a cellular network and a communication service

Tools and techniques for dynamically transcoding media streams are described herein. These tools may provide machine-readable storage media that contain machine-readable instructions that, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to define initial transcoding schemes under which media streams are to be transcoded as they passes between endpoints. In response to changes in conditions affecting the media streams, the machine may dynamically update the initial transcoding scheme.

Dynamically adapting media streams

Procedures for commanding a media relay to direct interactive connectivity establishment (ICE) communications are discussed. In an implementation, a back-to-back user agent may issue a command changing the state of the media relay so that communications initially routed through the back-to-back user agent may be routed to a non-ICE device.

Interactive connectivity establishment for non-enabled endpoints

A hybrid Unified Communications (UC) telephony deployment includes users of a tenant that are hosted between a UC cloud deployment and a UC on-premise deployment that offers PSTN connectivity for the users. An identity of a tenant and its' users are maintained consistently between the on-premise and cloud based UC deployment (e.g. telephone numbers, dialing preferences, voice mail . . . ). Each user of the tenant can register with the UC service from one or more locations (e.g. on-premise, off-premise . . . ) whether or not they are hosted by the on-premise deployment or the cloud based UC deployment. Functionality of the UC deployment may also be maintained at one or more locations within the hybrid UC deployment. For example, some services (e.g. voicemail, or other services) can be hosted in the cloud while the remaining services are hosted on-premise. Different Telco providers may be chosen by the tenant to provide PSTN services for one or more users of the tenant.

Hybrid unified communications deployment between cloud and on-premise

Providing non-voice capabilities relating to a phone call at a computing device includes receiving a request to begin a telephone call from a first telephone to a second telephone, wherein the requesting is performed using messaging between computing devices connected via a computer network, and wherein the messaging is part of a signaling phase dialog. The signaling phase dialog may be used in providing information associated with the identity of parties of the telephone call. Commencing a call phase dialog between the computing devices may be performed after the telephone call is established over the public switched telephone network. The call phase dialog may allow messages relating to the telephone call to be passed between the computing devices, at least while the telephone call is in progress. The dialogs and messaging may be performed using session initiation protocol (SIP) or another computer communication protocol.

Associating a telephone call with a dialog based on a computer protocol such as SIP

User quality of experience in a real time communication system is determined by analyzing endpoint performance metric reports correlated with performance factors of each endpoint in an endpoint profile for a more complete view of an audio/video quality of experience. Reports may include endpoint profile reports, which may be sent once at the beginning and then again only if an endpoint attribute changes; session reports, which include measured metric information and are sent at the conclusion of each session; and session interval reports, which also include metric information, but are sent during the session based on a period or a predefined threshold.

Endpoint report aggregation in unified communication systems

A method for transferring a telephone call from a client computer to a second electronic device includes establishing a connection for a telephone call between the client computer and a first electronic device, and sending a request to a server computer to transfer the telephone call from the client computer to the second electronic device, the client computer and the second electronic device having the same user, the request initiating a consultation call to the second electronic device. The method also includes receiving a response from the server computer that the second electronic device has accepted the telephone call, and replacing the client computer with the second electronic device as a party in the telephone call with the first electronic device, the continuity of the telephone call being maintained at the first electronic device during the time that the client computer is replaced with the second electronic device.

Using consultation call to transfer call across endpoints

Independent telephony systems are integrated by using symmetric forking from both systems. Calls received by either system are forked to the other system. Thus, a call can be accepted by one of the systems, using its external interfaces, and presented to all devices in both systems. Each system is enabled to leverage internal call control advanced features to enhance overall user experience. Internally inserted parameters to call requests are used between the two systems for preventing endless loop of calls between the integrated systems.

Accommodation of two independent telephony systems

A method for controlling or monitoring a common PBX phone line from a plurality of personal computer endpoints with multiple instances of application of a SIP soft phone application.

Controlling or monitoring PBX phone from multiple PC endpoints

A conference server may request a key frame from a conference participant in response to determining that the conference participant should become a most active participant, and the conference server may make the conference participant the most active participant in response to receiving the key frame from the conference participant.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Danny Levin