Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Wai Chan

Craig M Combel

Sangya Singh

Jeanine E Spence

Greg Prickril

Jared R Parker

Scott Neilson

David M Bozich

Rob Nichols

Kathleen Linscott

Salvador Celis

An integrated collaborative user interface for a document editor is provided. The integrated collaborative user interface includes a document pane, document details pane and a section details pane. Document details and section details are obtained and provided to authors. A collaborative author views the document details, section details and provides updates to a document in the document editor. Changes are then refreshed to the authors to provide a consistent and up-to-date status of the document.

Integrated collaborative user interface for a document editor program

A user interface control is presented for assisting the computer user in viewing cells with a data table. In particular, a vector viewing control is presented which enables the computer user to view cells within a data table. The vector viewing control comprises a plurality of cell elements, each cell element corresponding to one or more cells in the data table. The cell elements correspond to a vector of cells in the data table that is represented by the vector viewing control. Upon user interaction with the vector viewing control, an expanded view is presented showing the contents of the data cell corresponding to the location of the interaction point on the control. The computer user can move the expanded view up and down the vector to view the contents of the data table.

Scrollbar for zooming on rows and columns of a spreadsheet and interpreting cells

Data elevation architecture for automatically and dynamically surfacing to a user interface (UI) context-specific data based on specific workflow or content currently being worked on by a user. Data is broken down into data elements and stored at a data element level in a data catalog using metadata, attributes, and relationships. Data elements are automatically selected from a comprehensive collection of the data catalogs based on relevancy and correlation to the current user task. The data catalog stores and relates the data elements and metadata based on criteria specified by content matching based on business terms or specified in a business process in predefined relationships between forms or specified by the user as correlated. The UI displays the data automatically in forms dynamically selected, populated, and presented at the point of focus or user activity so that the user can interact or take action immediately.

Presentation of information based on current activity

Architecture that defines a document or portions thereof as data elements that are related and categorized. A data catalog is created that uses a schema for the data elements and a set of relationships, attributes and values that further define the data elements, all stored as metadata about the data elements. The metadata is employed to enable the application, display surface, and user to see only data relevant to the task at hand. The positioning and grouping of controls, control characteristics, and control behavior at the display surface is facilitated by forms which are dynamically populated for presentation and which are driven directly by the data catalog. The catalog can be made aware of device parameters, for example, the display size and resolution thereby enabling data to be displayed differently based upon the device parameters.

Flexible data presentation enabled by metadata

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Wai Chan