Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Omar Aftab

David Paul Limont

Selvaraj Nalliah

John Allen Atwood

Zhidong Yang

Patrick Tousignant

Massimiliano Ciccotosto

Juan Vicente Esteve Balducci

Samuel Neely

Harvinder S Bhela

Katy Chen

Syed Mansoor Jafry

Amer A Hassan

Yi Zhang

Shiraz Jitendra Cupala

Kenneth Alan Lobb

Bradford R Clark

Danny Levin

Christopher Michael Novak

Taqi Jaffri

Sonu Arora

Todd Garnet Wagner

Eslam Kamal Abdelaal Abdelreheem

Mohammed Mustafa Mohammed Ali Moussa

Senthilkumar Chandramohan

Ahmed Mostafa Othman Abdelmotaleb

Gary William Hall

Yaroslav Goncharov

Amer Aref Hassan

The disclosed technology is generally directed to chatbot conversation management. In one example of the technology, a generic model associated with a first property associated with a chatbot manager is received. The generic model is generated based on machine learning. A refined model that is associated with the first property is generated based on the generic model and a first plurality of phrases. A first conversation is held between a chatbot and an end user. Upon determining that the value of the first property for the end user is not stored in the database, via the chatbot, during the first conversation, the refined model is used to dynamically ask questions to the end user to determine a value of the first property for the end user. In a second conversation between the chatbot and the end user, the value of the first property for the end user is referenced.

Intelligent, personalized, and dynamic chatbot conversation

A system and method for facilitating social interactions between different individuals. Information available about each of the individuals engaged in a social interaction is used to provide a 'social accelerator' for an interaction between the individuals. Social interactions are improved or accelerated by aggregating available information about individuals participating in an information system. When an interaction event trigger is received, the context of context for possible social interaction between the users around the trigger event is determined. A social accelerator is selected from available interest information common to the participating user and the target user, and the social accelerator is provided to one of the individuals.

Acceleration of social interactions

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for enforcing device settings for mobile devices. Generally, a computer system enforces appropriate mobile device settings (e.g., policy and/or configuration settings) prior to permitting a mobile device to access maintained data. The computer system receives a request from a mobile device. The computer system determines that current mobile device settings are not appropriate for accessing the maintained data. The computer system sends device settings, representing a new mobile device configuration that is appropriate accessing the maintained data, to the mobile device. The computer system receives an indication that the mobile device is configured in accordance with the device settings. The computer system permits the mobile device to access the maintained data in response to receiving the indication that the mobile device is configured in accordance with the device settings.

Enforcing device settings for mobile devices

Disclosed are methods and systems for selecting a host facility for a communications session for a group of devices. In one aspect, a method includes partitioning the devices into multiple clusters. Each cluster is associated with a respective host facility that is estimated to provide each device in the respective cluster a specified quality requirement during the communication session. The method also includes accessing a weighting value for each cluster of the different clusters based on one or more attributes of the devices in each respective cluster of the different clusters, and selecting a group host facility, from the host facilities associated with the clusters based on the weighting value of each respective cluster and a predefined criterion, the group host facility to host the communication session for the devices.

Host selection for a media flow

Techniques for host facility assignment for a conferencing session are described. Generally, a conferencing session refers to an exchange of communication media between communication endpoints. Accordingly to various embodiments, multiple different host facilities are available for hosting a conferencing session. Further to techniques described herein, a host facility from the different available host facilities is selected to perform hosting duties for the conferencing session. In at least some implementations, a host facility that is estimated to provide a highest session quality for the conferencing session is selected to host the conferencing session.

Host facility assignment for a conferencing session

A unified messaging system allows the receipt and sending of different messages across devices is established by creating relationships that leverage the capabilities of different devices. A message server establishes a relationship with a mobile device. Through the relationship, the message server can use the mobile device to send different types of messages that the server computer cannot transmit. A relationship between a client and a server extends this capability to the client. Through these relationships, a client can retrieve mobile device messages as well as generate them. The generated mobile device messages are transmitted to the message server. The message server determines that the received messages are mobile device messages that the server cannot deliver and sends the mobile device messages to the user's mobile device. The mobile device receives the mobile device messages from the message server and transmits the mobile device message to recipient mobile devices.

Universal mobile device messaging

A method is used to develop and maintain a user's lifetrail, which is a historical record specifying the location of the user while in possession of a mobile communication device. A mobile device determines its current location by extracting a beacon ID from a signal source and transmitting it to a remotely-located server, which accesses a look-up table to find the corresponding location of the signal source represented by the beacon ID. The location may be specified in accordance with a spatial compression technique. The server transmits the signal source location back to the mobile device so that the mobile device knows that it is located within the coverage area of the signal source. Battery power is conserved by collecting the beacon IDs when it is receiving the beacon signals for some other purpose and not necessarily solely for the purpose of determining its current location. Battery power can be further conserved by deferring the resolution of the beacon IDs so that they are not necessarily associated with their corresponding location when they are received, but only at some later convenient time. In some cases resolution of the beacon IDs may be performed using social graph data received from a social network.

Mobile communication device maintaining lifetrails in a battery efficient manner

Selecting and providing context information relevant to a user at a particular time and location. Input parameters such as a location and time are selected. Context information is obtained for the selected location and time based on the input parameters. Exemplary input parameters include a user activity history, user content such as calendar appointments, social networking data, and a state of a computing device of the user (e.g., as collected by sensors of the computing device). The computing device of the user presents the obtained context information to the user at the selected location and time.

Providing information to users based on context

Growing community of inventors

Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Omar Aftab