Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Callahan Cellular LLC

Other

Jowtiff Bros. A.b., LLC

Dmitri Davydok

Nicholas James Thomson

Indrojit Deb

Michael J McCormack

David Robert Shutt

Anthony L Lee

Ian Carl Legler

Balaji Balasubramanyan

Praveen Upadhyay

Ron Mondri

Navin Ishwar Thadani

Tong Gao

Bahram Bahram Pour

Wayne Parker, Iii

On a client computer, customer relationship management software is integrated into a messaging application that includes a user interface. Customer relationship management (CRM) information is received from a server computer. An automatic determination is made as to whether the received CRM information is to be cached on the client computer. When it is determined that the CRM information is to be cached on the client computer, the CRM information is cached in a cache on the client computer. When at least some of the CRM information is cached on the client computer, the cached CRM information is displayed as a view on the client computer. The display of the CRM information is integrated into the user interface of the messaging application program.

Cached and server views with automatic caching and smooth scrolling

A method and apparatus are provided for determining the layout of a form automatically to accommodate text in the form. Under the method and apparatus, a set of parameters define the sizing and alignment of elements of the form. Sizing and positioning instructions that are separate from the sizing and alignment parameters set the sizing and positioning of elements of the form based on the sizing and alignment parameters. The instructions determine the minimum size for the form, based in part on text in the form. The difference between the minimum size for the form and a desired size for the form is then distributed across the form to size and position the elements in the form.

Method and apparatus for form automatic layout

CRM application controls and functionality for multiple CRM applications/instances are integrated with an ECS application user interface by designating a single CRM application/instance as primary and providing synchronization and rich client control capabilities. Other CRM applications/instances are set up as secondary within the ECS user interface employing a single CRM connection module and a single state manager. Accessing a secondary CRM application/instance activates relevant controls applicable to that CRM application/instance without a user having to logout and login to the ECS client.

Integration of CRM applications to ECS application user interface

A conflict resolution system allows an end user to export customizations to an application program so that the customizations can be imported by another end user. The conflict resolution system may export a customization by outputting metadata describing the customization. When the customization is a custom property, the metadata may include the name of the entity with which the property is associated, the name of the property, the type of the property, a globally unique identifier for the property, the location on the user interface for the input field for the custom property, and so on. End users may want to share not only their customizations but also the underlying data associated with a customization. When a conflict occurs during import of a customization alone without the data, then the conflict resolution system resolves the conflict in favor of the imported property. When a conflict occurs during import of a customization with data, the conflict resolution system resolves the conflict in favor of the existing property.

Resolving conflicts when importing an application customization

Local data caching for views with linked attributes are optimized based on net change notifications. Data requests may be made periodically to a server, each request with a specific set of constraints on timestamps of entity types involved in a view and each ordered by a primary item's identifier (ID). Applying the results of these requests to a client-side cache of the view results enables the client-side cache to stay 'relatively fresh' with respect to the server's data. The server may handle view data requests where all conditions on related tables' columns are applied with an 'and' operation, and the specific set of conditions on the timestamps of the related items are applied to get the net changes with minimum redundancy. The server may also handle stateless view data requests limited by the number of results, and a &#x201c;sort by ID&#x201d; may be applied to ensure consistent results over time.

Net change notification based cached views with linked attributes

Background synchronization of data objects may be provided. A background thread associated with an application may be created. A first data item associated with the application may be opened by the background thread and a copy of the first data item may be created. A modification may be performed on a property of the first data item. If no second data item is associated with a pending modification, the first data item may be replaced with the modified copy of the first data item.

Background synchronization of data objects

A language package system that prevents undesirable behaviors resulting from an incompatibility between a core package of a software product and its language packages is provided. The language package system executes when a user starts the execution of the core package on a computing device. The language package system retrieves a language package version number from the core package that indicates the version number of compatible language packages and an indication of the preferred language of the user. The language package system then determines whether the computing device has a compatible language package that is available. When the computing device has a compatible language package, the software product uses that language package. When the computing device has no compatible language package, the language package system then performs processing that factors in the unavailability of a compatible language package.

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Dmitri Davydok