Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Corporation

Russell Lee Simpson, Jr

Shawn Bracewell

Puhazholi Vetrivel

Giselli Panontini De Souza Sana

Ward Beattie

Jim R Van Eaton

David Paul Limont

Jonathan David Friedman

Jason Todd Henderson

David Claux

Joseph McLaughlin

Zohaib Haider Ali

Chao-Chung Lin

Eva Britta Karolina Burlin

Sridhar Raman

Jasdeep Singh Chugh

Daniel Veiga Kling

Selvaraj Nalliah

Richard Bruce Ward

Darren Arthur Shakib

Hayley Lynn Steplyk

Elena Catrinescu

Andrew James Peacock

Srinivasa Reddy Manda

Karim Batthish

Jason Andrew Cook

Linda Chen Gray

Eric Neil Lockard

Joey Masterson

Ozan Ozhan

Rajatish Mukherjee

James R Van Eaton

William Dean Saulnier

David Meyers

Kristian Lennart Magnus Andaker

Ilya Smirnov

John Yun-Kuang Chen

Troy Mayhan

Matthew David Durasoff

Paul Limont

Scott C Mikula

Kip Fern

Akashdeep Khudia

Kristian Lm Andaker

Deborah Eileen Sommers

Shawn Derek Bracewell

Karim Michel Batthish

An electronic mail (e-mail) display is generated for a user, showing a mailbox for the user. A next calendar item indication is persistently displayed on the e-mail display. The next calendar item includes a countdown timer showing a time until the next calendar item is scheduled to begin.

Displaying a countdown timer for a next calendar event in an electronic mail inbox

Systems, methods, and software disclosed herein facilitate draft reminders. In at least one implementation, a primary view of an information management application is rendered. In various scenarios the primary view may include primary items, such as emails, events, tasks, or other types of items. When a reminder view is invoked, draft items are identified to include in the reminder view. The reminder view is then rendered in an overlaid manner with respect to the primary view and includes the draft items.

Reminder views in email applications

Techniques and technologies for smart support systems are described. In at least some embodiments, a method comprises: receiving an indication of a user invoking a support facility due to a problem experienced with a software application; obtaining user-related information including at least one of an age of the user or at least one indication of proficiency of the user with operation of the software application; obtaining problem-related information related to the problem experienced with the software application; and selecting a starting point of a support path based at least partially on the problem-related information and the user-related including at least one of an age of the user or at least one indication of proficiency of the user with operation of the software application, the support path defining one or more operations intended to address the problem experienced with the software application.

Smart support

Parsed attachments from email communications may be sorted. In some examples, an application, such as an email processing application, may display email summaries associated with emails within an email summary view of the email application interface. A selected email associated with a selected email summary may be displayed in an email view. The email processing application may identify one or more attachments within the emails. Attachment summaries associated with the one or more attachments may be displayed within an attachment summary view of the email application interface.

Sorting parsed attachments from communications

Reminder views for facilitating draft reminders

A server push model for client/server communications. The push architecture operates on top of a non-push (e.g., request/response) protocol (e.g., HTTP) to combine notifications from multiple data sources (e.g., email, text messaging, etc.). The server can be a middle-tier server (or proxy) to which a single web client registers interest in one or more notification types from one or more data sources. The mid-tier server aggregates the notifications from the various data sources and delivers the notifications to the requesting client via a single 'push' pipe. The web client then distributes each notification to the appropriate parts of the client user interface. A producer/consumer locking mechanism eliminates blocking threads waiting on a mutual exclusion lock. A notification throttling mechanism distinguishes different types of notifications in order to guarantee that the client is not overloaded with too much information.

Push mechanism for efficiently sending aggregated data items to client

Various technologies and techniques improve the updating of client content in a client/server arrangement. A client notification engine of a user interface subscribes to receive notifications from a central server side notification engine. The client notification engine polls the server side notification engine at a specified interval. The server side notification engine receives and aggregates notifications about and/or from one or more sources and aggregates them into a collection of relevant notifications. These notifications are sent to the client where the different subscriptions originated and are then used by the user interface in the client to update part of the content being displayed as appropriate.

Web based client/server notification engine

A virtual list view in a web application is dynamically updated such that a user can seamlessly access and manage the presented data despite the inherent latency involved with the web. Data associated with the virtual list view is downloaded in chunks and the view updated as the user scrolls. By coupling the user's scrolling and particular chunks of data to be downloaded system resources are utilized in an efficient manner. Additional user interface controls for the user interface are employed for rapid and efficient access to portions of data minimizing delay and system resource occupation.

Dynamically updated virtual list view

The present invention provides for securely processing client credentials used for Web-based access to resources. A login page with an interface for entering user credentials is presented at a client and entered user credentials are sent to the server. In response to receiving user credentials, the server generates a unique session identifier for the client. The server also derives a digital signature for the user credentials based on a current key in a rotating key store and the unique session identifier. The server then encrypts the digital signature and the user credentials based on an encryption key derived from the current key and the unique session identifier. When encrypted credentials are received back at the client, keys from the rotating key store are used to attempt to validate the credentials. If user credentials can not be validated, a user is again presented with the login page.

Securely processing client credentials used for Web-based access to resources

A system and method for facilitating remote access of an application available via a stateless protocol is provided. Such applications are typically accessed via the World Wide Web portion of the Internet (the 'Web') using a browser application and an HTTP protocol. The system can include one or more components for caching data associated with the remote access, the data comprising state and/or user specific information. The state and/or user specific information can be stored in a user context object (UCO). One or more user context objects can be managed by a user context manager that facilitates locating user context objects and reclaiming memory associated with user context objects that are no longer necessary to support remote access of the application accessed via a stateless protocol.

System and method for managing states and user context over stateless protocols

Methods, systems, computer program products, and data structures for displaying data on a web browser interface where the data in its native format is not displayable on a web browser interface. A network server receives a request for content from a network device where the request includes a request for data that is not displayable on a web browser. The network server identifies a template, which will be used to transform non-displayable data into displayable content. The network server accesses non-displayable data that is stored on a data server and processes the accessed non-displayable data according to the identified template in order to transform it into displayable content. A template may include HTML code as well as customized tags. The customized tags are consumed by a rendering engine, which executes certain functions to modify the data, making it displayable content. Once transformed, displayable content is sent to the network device.

Template architecture and rendering engine for web browser access to databases

Method and system for assessing the performance of a server application that acquires performance information from the perspective of a simulated user and has significantly reduced hardware requirements. Particularly, actual user behavior is modeled so that accurate determinations can be made as to the number of users a given server application can adequately support. User behavior is modeled in a client profile that contains user parameters corresponding to the nature, timing, and frequency of user activities in operating a client that in turn corresponds to client tasks. A plurality of processes and process threads are initiated to contact a server as a plurality of simulated clients from a single client computer, each simulated client making a separate logical connection to the server. A task scheduler will schedule the simulated client tasks that are determined for each simulated user by reference to the user parameters in the client profile throughout a work day. The scheduler also introduces a random element so that the tasks simulate natural variability in user behavior. User receivable response times for the task corresponding to simulated user activity are maintained in a log file and the 95th percentile time or score for each task type is calculated. The individual task type scores may be weighted and averaged together to arrive at a weighted average response time. The weighted average response time can then be used as a threshold value to determine the total number of users a server application can adequately support.

Method, system, and product for assessing a server application

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Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Russell Lee Simpson, Jr