Resuming a context on a group of electronic devices

• US 10,554,427 B2
• Filed: 03/08/2017
• Issued: 02/04/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 03/08/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bradley, Lisa M., Harpur, Liam, Quirk, Aaron J., Sun, Lin
• Primary Examiner(s): Chou, Alan S
• Application Number:
  US15/452,822
• Publication Number:
  US 20180262356A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,063 Days
• Field of Search: 709204
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1818 Conference organisation arrangements, e.g. handling schedules, setting up parameters needed by nodes to attend a conference, booking network resources, notifying involved parties
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1822 Conducting the conference, e.g. admission, detection, selection or grouping of participants, correlating users to one or more conference sessions, prioritising transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/561 Adding application-functional data or data for application control, e.g. adding metadata
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/00 Services specially adapted for wireless communication networks; Facilities therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication

Abstract

Approaches presented herein enable resuming a context for a group of electronic devices based on a prior activity of the group members. Specifically, a current context of a user electronic device is collected at a conclusion of a first collaboration session. One or more participant electronic devices associated with the user electronic device are identified, either by being in a same location or virtually connected. A current context of each of the identified participant electronic devices is collected. The context of the user electronic device and each of the participant electronic devices are stored in a context database. The current context of the user electronic device and each of the participant electronic devices are resumed at a beginning of a second collaboration session when the user electronic device is resumed (e.g., powered on or brought out of “sleep” mode).

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for resuming a group context, comprising:

collecting, at a conclusion of a first collaboration session, a current context of a user electronic device;

identifying an participant electronic device that is associated with the user electronic device;

collecting a current context of the participant electronic device;

storing, as metadata, the current context of the user electronic device and the participant electronic device;

identifying, at a beginning of a second collaboration session, the participant electronic device when the user electronic device is resumed; and

resuming, based on the metadata, the current context of the user electronic device and the participant electronic device, wherein resuming includes closing any applications on the user electronic device that are not associated with the current context of the user electronic device and closing any applications on the participant electronic device that are not associated with the current context of the participant electronic device.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the participant electronic device is associated with the user electronic device based on a connection option, wherein the connection option is selected from the group consisting of the user electronic device and the participant electronic device are in a same location or the user electronic device and participant electronic device are virtually connected.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising storing the metadata in a context database.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising determining the user electronic device and the participant electronic device are in the same location using a short-range communication scheme when the connection option is the user electronic device and the participant electronic device are in the same location.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising determining the user electronic device and the participant electronic device are virtually connected based on a calendar entry and a conference phone number when the connection option is the user electronic device and the participant electronic device are virtually connected.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a context includes application information necessary to restore one or more active applications to a previous state.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising collecting device-specific information for the user electronic device and the participant electronic device.