Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Stephen Christopher Siciliano

Charles Lamanna

Prabir Krishna Shrestha

Balasubramanian Shyamsundar

Sunay Vaishnav

Ilya Grebnov

Merwan Vishnu Hade

Himanshu Agrawal

Jonjo Twist

Anjli Chaudhry

Prashant Kumar

Kartik Rao Polepalli

Kevin Kaiwon Lam

Ashwin Sathya Raghunathan

Fnu Anubhav

David Nissimoff

Jesse Francisco

Nitish Kumar Meena

Priti Sambandam

Joon Y Chung

Jonathan Reed Harris

Karandeep Singh Anand

Vladimir Pogrebinsky

William James Staples

Leon Welicki

Brad Olenick

Adam Abdelhamed

Angela L Moulden

Mo Wang

Christopher Scrosati

Daniel Joseph Kappes

Ryan Jones

Yang Liu

Khetthai Laksanakorn

You Tang

Jeffrey S Hollan

Sworupini Sureshkumar

Joshua Prentice Keckley

Prabir K Shrestha

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for identifying and consenting to permissions for workflow and code execution. Aspects of the invention can be used to automatically scan a workflow or code definition to identify (potentially all) the actions/triggers a workflow or program intends to perform on behalf of a user. The user is shown the actions/triggers the workflow or program intends to perform (e.g., at a user interface) before consent to perform the actions/triggers is granted. As such, a user is aware of intended actions/triggers of a workflow or program before granting consent. Further, since actions/triggers are identified from the workflow or code definition (and not formulated by an author), permission requests better align with permissions that workflow or program functionality actually uses during execution.

Identifying and consenting to permissions for workflow and code execution

Methods, systems, apparatuses, and computer program products are described herein that generate and assist in managing templates (pre-generated user-customizable automated workflows) that can be used to easily and efficiently develop automated workflows in an automated workflow development system. A plurality of workflows steps in a library of workflow steps is determined. One or more workflow templates are automatically generated. Each automatically generated workflow template includes a combination of at least two of the workflow steps in the library. The one or more workflow templates are stored in a library of templates. Furthermore, one or more workflow steps compatible with a workflow step may be determined. The determined one or more workflow steps may be displayed in association with the first workflow step for selection.

Lazy generation of templates

Methods, systems, apparatuses, and computer program products are provided for intermixing expressions with other types of data in input controls. A system includes a processor and a memory that stores program code configured to be executed by the processor. The program code comprises a step configuration interface configured to receive, via a same input control, an expression as a first segment and a different type of data from an expression as a second segment. The program code further comprises a logic generator configured to generate a serialized representation that includes a serialized version of the first segment and a serialized version of the second segment.

Intermixing literal text and formulas in workflow steps

Methods, systems, apparatuses, and computer program products are described herein that generate and assist in managing templates (pre-generated user-customizable automated workflows) that can be used to easily and efficiently develop automated workflows in an automated workflow development system. An automated workflow template for publication that includes parameters is received. At least a portion of the parameters included in the automated workflow template are automatically anonymized to generate an anonymized automated workflow template. The anonymized automated workflow template is published.

Automatic anonymization of workflow templates

A workflow development system is described that provides a developer with a search utility for finding steps for inclusion in a workflow. The system also automatically generates a meaningful name and/or graphical representation for a workflow. The system also provides a graphical user interface that represents output parameters of a first workflow step as user-interactive objects. These objects can be interacted with to cause the objects to be inserted into a data entry element that is used to specify a value for an input parameter of a second workflow step. When executable logic representing the first and second workflow steps is generated, the insertion of the objects into the data entry element has the effect of causing the value of the input parameter of the second workflow step to be defined to include the values of the output parameters that correspond to the inserted objects.

Workflow development system with ease-of-use features

A workflow development system is described herein that embeds a workflow designer user interface of a workflow development application into a user interface of another software application, so that the workflow designer user interface can be used to generate workflows that reference and/or interact with the other software application. In some aspects, the workflow development application obtains information indicative of a context of a user within the other software application and recommends workflow templates or workflow steps for selection by a user based on the obtained information. The workflow development application may also pre-populate certain parameters of certain workflow steps based on the obtained information.

Application with embedded workflow designer

Embodiments of facilitating creation of cloud computing applications are disclosed therein. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving user input of a plurality of workflow items as a sequence of graphical objects on a graphical user interface. The workflow items individually are related to one or more cloud computing services. The method also includes determining an execution sequence of the plurality of workflow items based on data dependencies individually between pairs of the workflow items, the determined execution sequence being different than the sequence of the graphical objects. The determined execution sequence includes executing pairs of the workflow items without data dependencies therebetween generally in parallel and sequentially executing other pairs of the workflow items with data dependencies therebetween in accordance with the data dependencies.

Designer tool for managing cloud computing services

Methods, systems, apparatuses, and computer program products are provided for remedying design time and runtime workflow errors. During design time of a workflow, an input parameter provided via the user interface may be validated to determine if the parameter is invalid. Based on the determination, a replacement parameter may be obtained and provided to the user interface control of the workflow user interface to replace the invalid workflow parameter during development of the workflow. During runtime of a workflow, a workflow engine may generate failure information where workflow logic fails to execute successfully. The failure information generated in response to a runtime failure is received by a remediation system and may be analyzed to identify a probable cause of the runtime failure. Remediation instructions to remediate the runtime failure may be determined and transmitted to a contact address associated with the workflow, enabling the workflow to be repaired.

Remediation of design time and runtime workflow errors

Aspects extend to methods, systems, and computer program products for creating workflow instances. Workflow templates define different functionalities, such as, for example, between fixed and variable functionality or between functionality authored by different co-authors. Different functionalities defined in a workflow template can be configured to interoperate to provide workflow instances. Functionality defined within a workflow template can be instantiated in a workflow instance based on properties corresponding to the functionality. The properties can include connections with credentials for accessing resources used by the functionality. Connections can obscure access to credentials so that processes outside of a workflow instance cannot use the credentials to access resources.

Creating workflow instances

A workflow development system is described herein that includes a graphical user interface (GUI) that is configured to selectively and dynamically allocate relatively more of a display area to a particular one of a plurality of different, simultaneously-displayed workflow step representations than is allocated to the other workflow step representation(s) to facilitate user interaction the particular workflow step representation. Such allocation may be carried out in response to user interaction with the particular workflow step representation or in response to a determination that a user is otherwise focused on the particular workflow step representation. In embodiments, the workflow step representations represent different workflow steps in a series of workflow steps. In further embodiments, the workflow step representations represent different workflow steps that may be performed depending upon the evaluation of a condition.

Computational tasks are mapped with computational locations in a distributed system such as a cloud computing environment. Mapping does not rely on workload estimates. Instead, tasks whose prerequisite tasks or other preconditions are determined to be mutually exclusive are co-located, while other tasks are mapped to different locations than one another. Locations are servers, processor cores, virtual machines, applications, or computational processes, for example. Mutual exclusivity may be determined by detecting that preconditions require different values of a shared variable in order to be satisfied, for example, or determining that preconditions correspond to different branches of a conditional programming statement. A satisfiability engine may also provide a satisfiability determination. Co-located tasks may also be batched, for improved execution performance. Co-location based on mutual exclusivity may result in fewer operations to save and restore task state, fewer cache misses, greater co-allocation of computational resources by the tasks, and easier debugging.

Precondition exclusivity mapping of tasks to computational locations

Methods, systems, apparatuses, and computer program products are provided for developing user applications that include workflows, and in particular, for developing the user applications and workflows in parallel. A first user interface is provided on a display screen that enables a graphical user interface (GUI) of a user application to be configured. Controls are enabled to be selected for inclusion in the GUI of the user application. Workflow logic is enabled to be associated with a control included in the GUI. A second user interface is provided on the display screen concurrent with the first user interface. The second user interface enables the workflow logic to be generated. Steps are enabled to be selected for inclusion in the workflow logic. Each step is configured to operate on data entered via the GUI and/or data of another step of the workflow logic.

Parallel front end application and workflow development

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Stephen Christopher Siciliano