Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Nicholas Paul Duane

Scott A Thurlow

Andrew Grey Carlson

David John Brennan

Brian W MacDonald

Christopher Warner McCarron

Suryanarayanan V Raman

Robert Marcus Girling

Se-Wai Lee

Jennifer Ruth Mead

Eric L Van Doren

Richard Ciapala

Michael Gene Leu

Kenneth Nilsen

In an electronic mail system environment, a system and method for providing message flags, providing custom forms, and providing an autoresponse feature. The e-mail system notifies a recipient when a due date is approaching or when a follow-up action is past due. A custom forms feature allows a user to create and share custom forms without requiring the form to be published or installed by other users. The custom form's attributes are transmitted to the recipient as an element of the e-mail message. An autoresponse feature allows a sender to create a message that includes voting buttons corresponding to the possible responses to a query. A recipient replies by selecting one of the voting buttons. The recipient's vote is automatically tallied in the sender's copy of the message, thus allowing the sender to view a vote tally, a list of recipients, and their response.

Method for automatically implementing special forms in an e-mail system

An architecture that supports the instrumentation of software to generate structured information about its operation. A library of methods and data structure definitions is provided to a developer of a piece of software. The developer includes calls to the methods in order to signal the fact that a given event has occurred. The developer may also cause the program to provide information descriptive of the event by populating data structures defined in the library. The library methods may also contribute to the population of these data structures. In a distributed computing environment in which tasks are performed through a series of calls to remote computers, 'per-task' tracing may be performed by sending trace instructions to the remote computers along with the remote calls.

Task tracing in a distributed computing environment

In an electronic mail system environment, a system and method for automatically checking recipients' names, providing message flags, providing custom forms, and providing an autoresponse feature. Recipients' names are resolved in the background, while the user of the e-mail system is composing the message. The user easily resolves ambiguous names by using a context menu. The resolved ambiguous names are automatically used to create nicknames, which are used to resolve ambiguous names in the future. Message flags allow a sender or recipient to identify required follow-up action and a deadline. The recipient may use the message flags to quickly determine which messages require follow-up action. The e-mail system notifies a recipient when a due date is approaching or when a follow-up action is past due. A custom forms feature allows a user to create and share custom forms without requiring the form to be published or installed by other user. The custom form's attributes are transmitted to the recipient as an element of the e-mail message. An autoresponse feature allows a sender to create a message that includes voting buttons corresponding to the possible responses to a query. A recipient replies by selecting one of the voting buttons. The recipient's vote is automatically tallied in the sender's copy of the message, thus allowing the sender to view a vote tally, a list of the recipients, and their response.

A system for providing automatic capabilities in creating a computer form containing control items. Upon selecting a control item to place on a computer form, preferred coordinates to position the control item is automatically determined. Next, the size of the new control item is automatically selected based on properties of the new control item and the size and location of surrounding control items. The new control item, and any intersecting control items, are then automatically adjusted to accommodate the new control item at the preferred coordinates. The adjustments include: (1) setting the width and height of the new control item; (2) identifying the space available to above and to the right of the preferred coordinates; and if the width or height of the new control item exceeds the space available, (3) adjusting the other control items to obtain additional space for the new control item. Alignment properties for the new control item are also automatically determined and assigned. Thus, when other control items on the computer form either moved or re-sized, the control item is adjusted in accordance with the alignment properties. Labels to identify the new control item may be automatically created and attached to the new control item. Furthermore, the labels are uniformly and control items are uniformly aligned on the computer form. Finally, control items can be repositioned manually without automatically relocating the control item.

Method and apparatus for providing automatic layout capabilities for computer forms

A system for selectively recording a data structure where one or more external program modules are registered. A group of important actions is selected corresponding to both internal program modules and registered external program modules. The system determines if an action associated with one of the internal program modules or one of the registered external program modules has occurred. If so, the system determines if the action is one of the important actions. If the action is an important action, then information associated with the important action is placed into data fields of a data structure. The data structure containing the information is stored in computer memory. The data structure is maintained within a central container or folder in memory, along with previously recorded data structures. The data structure can be automatically deleted after a predetermined threshold of time. A representation of the data structure can be viewed along with representations of previously recorded data structures along a chronological timeline in related groups. The groups are based upon a particular data field of the data structure.

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Bothell, WA, United States of America

Nicholas Paul Duane