Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michael James Ott

Akezyt Janedittakarn

Alexander M Tkatch

Arash Ghanaie-Sicanie

David Robert Shutt

Arash Ghanaie-Sichanie

Ramesh Thimmarajarasu Bangalore

Roberto Adlich Dos Santos

Michaeljon Miller

Kevin Whittenberger

Nirav Girish Shah

Hao Sun

Richard Lee Dickinson

Edward A Martinez

Dominic Justin Pouzin

Jasjit Singh Grewal

Elliot Stephenson Lewis

Nishant Gupta

Tsvi Michael Reiter

Matthew Lenell Cooper

Michael David McGrath

Xinguang Albert Chen

Mohammad Mushtaque Silat

Jared Benjamin Greiner

Youg Lu

Jagan Peri

Mahesh Vijayaraghavan

Arash Ghanaie-Sicanle

Andrei Smertin

Jay Grewal

Ghanaie-Sichanie Arash

Pat Munns

Eric Liu

Douglas William Wood

Techniques described herein enable auto targeting assistance for input devices. Among a number of aspects of the present disclosure, techniques disclosed herein enable a computing device to receive a directional input signal from a wide range of input devices to select an interface element from a number of interface elements based on an arrangement of the interface elements. In some configurations, one or more angles and distances can be measured from an interface element to a vector derived from an input signal. The angles and distances can be used to select the interface element based on one or more criteria, including a weighted set of angles and distances. Auto scrolling functions can also bring a hidden interface element into a viewing area. The techniques disclosed herein can provide such functionality without requiring a UI programmer to provide complex code that associates individual interface elements for navigational purposes.

Auto targeting assistance for input devices

A hosted multi-tenant application is provided that permits a tenant to self-manage aspects of the operation of the application. A tenant may be permitted to upgrade the multi-tenant application on-demand or according to a schedule, to place the multi-tenant application into a read-only mode of operation, to create a shadow copy of their unshared organization database, to merge changes to a shadow copy into a master version of the unshared organization database, to create and revert to snapshots of an unshared organization database, and to perform other functions. A computing architecture that utilizes site-wide server computers and scale groups may be utilized to implement this functionality.

Tenant management of a hosted multi-tenant application

A dynamic load balancing system is described that determines the load of resources in a hosted environment dynamically by monitoring the usage of resources by each customer and determines the number of customers hosted by a server based on the actual resources used. The system receives a performance threshold that indicates when a server is too heavily loaded and monitors the resource usage by each customer. When the load of an overloaded server in the hosted environment exceeds the received performance threshold, the system selects a source customer currently hosted by the overloaded server to move to another server.

Automatic load balancing, such as for hosted applications

Technologies are described herein for implementing a hosted multi-tenant application system. The server computers utilized to provide the hosted application are organized into logical groupings of server computers called scale groups. One or more tenants are assigned to each scale group. When a new tenant is provisioned, the tenant is assigned to a scale group and a database server in the assigned scale group creates a database for the tenant. An association between the tenant and the scale group is also created in a shared configuration database. When a request is received from a tenant to access the hosted application, the shared configuration database is consulted to locate the scale group hosting the tenant. Once the appropriate scale group has been located, the request is redirected to the appropriate scale group for processing.

Multi-tenant hosted application system

A method of adding and analyzing metadata to discrete variables, such as time intervals and a system to implement to method is disclosed. The metadata can be aggregated and analyzed using analysis operations such as intersection, union, subtraction and inversion.

Blocks of time with metadata

An extensible, multi-tenant software-as-a-service business application platform is provided for hosting multiple organizations. Organization services are provided by virtual or physical servers with dedicated data stores assembled in scalable groups. Distributed interaction between components of the scalable groups may enable extensibility and reliability, while changes in locations of organization services are provided to the client(s) for seamless continuation of the client's access to the services. Customizable and dynamic APIs for accessing each organization's data and applications isolated from the others and pluggable third party authentication services may also be integrated into the platform.

Extensible and programmable multi-tenant service architecture

A server platform exposes server-hosted application services to client applications. Calls to the server-hosted application services may be executed along with custom business logic extensions. A client platform is also provided that exposes client-hosted application services to a client application. The same business logic extensions that execute on the server platform can be utilized by the client platform. When a client application is online and connected to the server platform, the client application utilizes the server-hosted application services in the manner described above. When the client application is offline, the client application utilizes the client-hosted application services. The server platform synchronizes the business logic extensions to the client platform.

Executing business logic extensions on a client computing system

In a web-based service environment, third party providers need to have varying degrees of access to user data for their complementary services. To prevent third party providers from having broader access than necessary or not adequate levels of access, transferable restricted security tickets are employed to determine an appropriate level of access for third parties. Tickets with expiration and restriction roles define a duration and level of access for a third party. The restrictions are determined through an intersection of the authorizing user's security role and restriction roles defined in the system.

Transferable restricted security tokens

Service-oriented systems employing pipeline architecture to accommodate third party extensions for extending existing functionality or providing additional functionality are provided. User or third party provided plug-ins are registered through metadata and executed in a pipeline along with platform operations. The pipeline is extendable on the fly with newly uploaded plug-ins. Dependency analyses for ordering synchronous or asynchronous pipeline operations enable multiple parties to extend the system and operate predictably. Loop detection mechanisms prevent misuse of system resources through accidental or malicious creation of infinite loops with exceptions for non-degenerate infinite loops.

Service-oriented pipeline based architecture

In a multi-tenant data sharing environment with shared, customizable data attributes are assigned to requested data and stored in a cache store along with the requested data. For non-customized data designated as system data, one copy is stored in the cache store for use by multiple tenants allowing optimization of memory and performance for each data request/retrieval operation. A 'delete sentinel' attribute may be assigned to non-existing data in the cache store enabling notification of requesting tenant(s) without a need to access the tenant data store each time a request for the non-existing data is received.

In-memory caching of shared customizable multi-tenant data

Technologies are described herein for executing business logic extensions on a client computing system. A server platform exposes server-hosted application services to client applications. Calls to the server-hosted application services may be executed along with custom business logic extensions. A client platform is also provided that exposes client-hosted application services to a client application. The same business logic extensions that execute on the server platform can be utilized by the client platform. When a client application is online and connected to the server platform, the client application utilizes the server-hosted application services in the manner described above. When the client application is offline, the client application utilizes the client-hosted application services. The server platform synchronizes the business logic extensions to the client platform.

In a multi-tenant environment, synchronous processing requests from clients associated with tenants are handled by middle tier servers, which forward requests for asynchronous processing to queues associated with organizational databases for each tenant directed by a locator service. A group of independent asynchronous processing servers are used to perform the asynchronous processing interacting with the databases in a distributed manner. The allocation of the requests among the asynchronous servers is managed by an exponential back off for organizations with no waiting requests algorithm combined with a quota system based on historic load for organizations that have requests. The independence of the synchronous and asynchronous processing servers, as well as the distributed interaction between the asynchronous processing servers and the databases enables scalability of the system based on request types and implementation of reliable recovery mechanisms.

Reliable and scalable multi-tenant asynchronous processing

A method of extending the functionality of an API in a CRM program and system to implement the method is disclosed. The method may allow a user to use request and response messages to be communicated with a single interface that may be exposed as a CRM web service module to create new business logic and operations by extending previously defined classes.

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Michael James Ott