Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Srikanth Shoroff

Gur Kimchi

Vadim Eydelman

Jeremy Thomas Buch

Kyle G Peltonen

F Soner Terek

Sean C Olson

Bartosz Boleslaw Milewski

William Henry Gates, Iii

Dmitriy Meyerzon

Joshua T Goodman

Susan Theresa Dumais

Jensen Michael Harris

Anton W Krantz

Eran Megiddo

Steven M Shaw

William George Verthein

Amey Parandekar

Maxim A Ivanov

Ankit Tandon

Michael Victor Ehrenberg

Nghiep Duong

Sankrant Sanu

Orit Levin

Margaret H Li

Mohammad Nasir Vakil

Paramesh Siddesha

David A Nichols

Mark Joseph Zbikowski

Brian Thomas Berkowitz

Shaun Douglas Pierce

Dhigha D Sekaran

Bimal Kumar Mehta

Richard J Wolf

Pavel Curtis

Shaun David Cox

Vishwajith Kumbalimutt

Robert I Brown

Ryan A Haveson

Andrew J Wallace

Scott Norin

Rao Salapaka

Radu V Ionescu

Mark Markaryan

Timothy J Rang

Vijay Kishen Hampapur Parthasarathy

Alan R Whitney

Sitaram C Raju

Bartosz Milewski

Dmitry Kakurin

Shaun D Cox

Vijay Kishen Parthasarathy

Mohammad N Vakil

Pairing and configuring a computing device for use in a meeting space is provided. An appliance may communicate a broadcast to a computing device which announces the availability of a meeting space for a meeting. The computing device may establish a connection with the appliance. The computing device may then join the meeting in the meeting space.

Smart device pairing and configuration for meeting spaces

A system and method is provided for creating accounts for users of a service. An infrastructure associated with an invited user enables the invited user to view a document that is stored in association with another user. A server computer is capable of receiving an indication to associate a second infrastructure with the invited user, which enables the creation of a document to be stored in association with the invited user.

Web service user experience without upfront storage expense

Architecture for a scalable, pluggable multi-party, and distributed multimedia conferencing. A centralized policy and control conferencing component allows the seamless plug-in of different distributed media components (e.g., data, audio/video, messaging) to accommodate client participation in a conference session. The centralized conference control component includes the following: a conference notification service for accepting subscriptions to the conference state and notifying subscribers about changes to that state; a conference policy and roster control service for storing and manipulating conference policy and rosters; a security service for user authorization/authentication based on user identity information; a scheduling service for conference scheduling; an allocation service for allocating the most available media component(s) for a conference session; and, an MCU management service for conference policy and roster management of the distributed media components.

Distributable, scalable, pluggable conferencing architecture

Multiple pieces of information can be arranged into a single construct that allows the employee to ascertain information quickly while at her workstation. Selection of information for placement into the construct can employ various statistical models and the like. Selective pieces of information can be masked for a user's construct based upon access rights of the user. Constructs can be configured by a user based on personal preferences as well as by an administrator. Population of metadata upon the construct can be performed automatically through an instruction of the administrator or be overridden by a user request. In addition, various types of synchronization can be implemented between constructs, such that identical or near-identical information is populated upon multiple constructs.

Communication workspace

Providing for generation of a task oriented data structure that can correlate natural language descriptions of computer related tasks to application level commands and functions is described herein. By way of example, a system can include an activity translation component that can receive a natural language description of an application level task. Furthermore, the system can include a language modeling component that can generate the data structure based on an association between the description of the task and at least one application level command utilized in executing the computer related task. Once generated, the data structure can be utilized to automate computer related tasks by input of a human centric description of those tasks. According to further embodiments, machine learning can be employed to train classifiers and heuristic models to optimize task/description relationships and/or tailor such relationships to the needs of particular users.

Providing a task description name space map for the information worker

Techniques for secure federation of data communications networks are provided. The techniques employ an edge proxy server to route messages depending on a federation mode. In Direct federation mode, an edge proxy server of a network is configured to exchange messages with a specified set of entities, such as other networks, servers, other devices, or users. In Automatic federation mode, an edge proxy server may accept all incoming messages from entities that have a valid certificate. In Clearinghouse federation mode, the edge proxy server forwards all outgoing messages to a specified, trusted clearinghouse server.

Secure federation of data communications networks

The present invention allows a server to delay allocating resources to a client's request. When the client requests a feature that requires server resources, the server accepts and acknowledges the client's request, but the client is prohibited from using the requested feature until further notice from the server. For example, during an authorization process, the server allocates only the minimum resources required to maintain the session and to authorize the client. Thereafter, the server allocates the resources necessary to support the client's request only when the resources become available. Until then, the server maintains the communications session without supporting the request. Thus, the server shepherds its resources rather than committing them at the whim of a client. Also, a client need not repeat its request if the server cannot immediately satisfy it; instead, the server accepts the request and then later begins to support it when adequate resources become available.

Method and system for delayed allocation of resources

Approaches for efficiently routing messages using a server pool are provided. In an embodiment, the system attempts to ensure high availability of servers by enabling clients to specify a domain name for the server pool even though the server pool comprises multiple servers, each having a distinct name. When a client initiates a session by using the server pool's domain name, the system may select an available server with a different name, and will route the request and subsequent messages during the session to the selected server. The system may select a server from the pool having the lowest load. The system may also indicate servers that subsequent messages in the session are to transit. Subsequent messages may then be routed to indicated servers to enable application services on the indicated servers to take actions based on the messages and the direction of the messages.

Efficient message routing when using server pools

A method is provided for allocating resources for users of a service based on whether a user has expressed intent to fully utilize capabilities of the service. If the intent is expressed by a user, an infrastructure is created that enables the user to maintain, via a user interface, artifacts associated with an account of the user on the service. A user that has not yet expressed such intent is presented with a prospective user interface simulating the user interface without enabling the prospective user to maintain the artifacts associated with an account of the prospective user.

A method and system for identifying whether an electronic communication is likely to be unwanted by the recipient is provided. A trust system relies on a trust provider, such as a sending domain, to indicate whether an electronic communication is likely to be unwanted. The sending domain may assign its trust level to the electronic communications based on various factors. Upon receiving the electronic communication and the trust level assigned by the sending domain, the receiving domain may determine whether to forward the electronic communication to the recipient based on the trust level. If a sending domain consistently provides trust levels that are accurate assessments of whether electronic communications are unwanted, then the receiving domain learns to trust the trust levels assigned by the sending domain. In contrast, if the assigned trust levels are not accurate, then the receiving domain learns not to trust the sending domain and may discard all message from the receiving domain without forwarding them to the recipients.

Method and system for a sending domain to establish a trust that its senders communications are not unwanted

Enabling media (audio/video) scenarios across firewalls typically requires opening up multiple UDP ports in an external firewall. This is so because RTP (Real Time Protocol, RFC 1889), which is the protocol used to carry media packets over IP network, requires a separate UDP receive port for each media source. Opening up multiple media ports on the external firewall is something that administrators are not comfortable doing as they consider it security vulnerability. The system and method according to the invention provides an alternate mechanism which changes RTP protocol a little and achieves a goal of traversing firewalls for media packets using a fixed number, namely two, of UDP ports.

System and method for efficiently transferring media across firewalls

A distributed authentication model that operates within a protocol-based sphere of trust. Rather than being able to communicate with any one of the computing systems internal to the sphere of trust, the amount of authentication is reduced by having the external computing systems initially communicate with a specific edge internal computing system. Many if not all of the internal computing systems then delegate the task of authentication to the edge computing system, and will rely on any authentication performed by the edge computing system. This allows the task of authentication to scale well for large protocol-based spheres of trust.

Distributed authentication in a protocol-based sphere of trust in which a given external connection outside the sphere of trust may carry communications from multiple sources

Allowing external computing systems to access a data conference with low risk of eavesdropping. An external computing system accesses a virtual lobby before joining the data conference. The virtual lobby is an object that may include a list of computing systems admitted to the lobby. An external computing system joins the lobby when it is included in a waiting list associated with the lobby. Being joined to the lobby does not allow full access to the live data exchanges in the data conference, but does facilitate functions that are less sensitive such as notifying a conference organizer that the joined party in the lobby would like to join the data conference. Upon receiving notice that an external computing system has joined the lobby, the conference organizer then provides further authorization for the external computing system to enter the data conference using any number of in-band or out-of-band mechanisms.

Virtual lobby for data conferencing

Growing community of inventors

Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Srikanth Shoroff