Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Patrick Michael Halvorsen

Felix G T I Andrew

Andi Fabian Rusu

Raymond Edward Ozzie

George P Moromisato

Eric M Patey

Jerry J Shekhel

Gregory Scott Klabish

Mark R Szamrej

Pamela J Taylor-Paris

Environmental signals are used to determine when to prompt a user to enable location sharing on their computer devices. These environmental signals may include the current location of the user being an unusual location for the user or a location that is tagged as a known social location such as a concert venue, stadium, or park. The environmental signals may also include one or more friends of the user being near the user. If the user chooses to enable location sharing in response to the prompt, the location of the user may be shared with some or all of their friends, or just the friends that have been determined to be near the user. After some amount of time has passed, or the environmental signals have changed, the location sharing may be automatically disabled for the user.

Enabling and disabling location sharing based on environmental signals

A conventional operating system folder or directory based file system is implemented with, or enhanced to provide, attributes of shared collaborative workspaces. In particular, the conventional file system is connected to either a server based or a distributed collaboration system and the user interface of the operating system file system is augmented to allow it to control aspects of the collaboration system. Each folder or directory can be synchronized and treated as a 'workspace' that can be viewed and shared with other users or groups of users. Folder can also be provided with 'awareness' information that indicates collaborators that are present and those that are sharing the workspace.

Method and apparatus for providing attributes of a collaboration system in an operating system folder-based file system

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Clyde Hill, WA, United States of America

Patrick Michael Halvorsen