Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Karel Blaha

Sean Olin Blagsvedt

Ilan Berker

Chris M White

Ricard Roma I Dalfó

James W Elder

Mitika Gupta

Todd Blocksom

Gabe Hall

Joseph Benoit, Iii

Methods and systems provide for aggregating person-centric data from one or more data sources and for providing the aggregated data to a user via a computer-displayed user interface that is keyed on or otherwise associated with an identified name in electronically presented text or data. A name in the text or data of an electronic document is identified and is associated with a unique identification, such as an electronic mail address. The unique identification is used by a persona menu application to obtain person-centric data from a variety of data sources. Example data sources include electronic mail contact files, electronic mail and calendaring system free/busy status files, directories of person-centric data related to persons associated with a distributed computing network, and instant messaging files. A data structure is populated with the returned data. Upon user selection, a user interface containing aggregated data associated with the identified name is displayed to the user to provide the user helpful information and actions associated with the identified name.

Persona menu

Automation objects are implemented in a client-server model to control operations on one or more client machines from a single machine automation control module, such as a test program. The machine automation control module instantiates machine automation server objects in a server process. The control module can then instruct the server objects to instantiate corresponding machine automation client objects on specified client machines via a connection mechanism. Object-oriented automation classes are provided in a library and may be extended to meet customized requirements of a given testing procedure. Examples of automation objects may include, without limitation, application objects, machine image objects, snapshot objects, file and registry access objects, reboot objects, autologon objects, and command execution objects. Automation objects allow the re-establishment of remote control after the loss of control resulting from a reboot, a relogon, or a disk image restoration, for example. Automation objects may also be used to automate the deployment of software throughout an enterprise.

Object-based machine automation method and system

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Renton, WA, United States of America

Karel Blaha