Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Kiran Kumar Dowluru

Stephan Doll

Gregory W Nichols

Vinit Ogale

Sri Sai Kameswara Pavan Kumar Kasturi

Keshava Prasad Subramanya

Desmond T Lee

Hongliu Zheng

Yunan Yuan

Calin Negreanu

Vlad Riscutia

Venkat Pradeep Chilakamarri

Harish Kasina

Philip Rueker

Fnu Om Krishna

Meera A Kulkarni

Diego F Martinez Diaz

Claire H Sisson

A current user lifecycle phase and a desired outcome for a user for a current user lifecycle phase are identified. Messages eligible to be shown to the user are identified based upon the current user lifecycle phase for the user. From the eligible messages, particular messages can be selected for delivery to the user based upon one or more governance rules, user attributes, user activity, seasonality, and/or the desired outcome for the current user lifecycle phase for the user. The selected messages can then be shown to the user. In this manner, relevant messages can be presented to the relevant users at a relevant time.

Orchestrated message delivery

Some embodiments of the invention provide techniques whereby a user may perform a system reset (e.g., to address system performance and/or reliability degradation, such as which may be caused by unused applications that unnecessarily consume system resources, an attempted un-install of an application that left remnants of the application behind, and/or other causes). In some embodiments, performing a system reset replaces a first instance of an operating system on the system with a new instance of the operating system, and removes any applications installed on the system, without disturbing the user's data.

System reset

Some embodiments of the invention provide techniques for performing system reset and/or system restore operations. Some embodiments store a record of any changes performed to a data file stored on a virtual hard disk using differencing virtual disks that are captured over time. To restore the file to the state in which it existed at any particular point in time, embodiments of the invention may allow for rolling back the system to a differencing virtual disk captured at or before that time and setting aside blocks of the differencing virtual disk chain captured after that point. To perform a system reset, the system may be rolled back to the parent virtual hard disk, by setting aside all of the blocks of the differencing virtual disk chain. Some embodiments of the invention provide for separating information on the system into a plurality of entities, and maintaining a separate set of differencing virtual disks for each entity. For example, some embodiments may create an entity may be created for each of the operating system, applications and user data, and maintain differencing virtual disks for each over time.

System reset and system restore

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Kiran Kumar Dowluru