System and method for collaboration with serverless presence

• US 20060242237A1
• Filed: 04/25/2005
• Published: 10/26/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/25/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Singhal, Sandeep K., Rao, Ravi T., Manion, Todd R., Thaler, David G., Gupta, Rohit, Simionescu, Radu
• Granted Patent: US 7,617,281 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• 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 51/04 Real-time or near real-time messaging, e.g. instant messaging [IM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/54 Presence management, e.g. monitoring or registration for receipt of user log-on information, or the connection status of the users

Abstract

Collaboration between collaborative endpoints may be facilitated by a serverless publication service of a collaborative services platform. The serverless publication service may be configured to accept communicative connections from the collaborative endpoints. Users of the collaborative services platform may publish their associated collaborative presences with the serverless publication service. For example, the collaborative presence of a user may include information with respect to valid collaborative endpoints for the user and collaborative capabilities at those endpoints. Subscriptions to published collaborative presences may be placed through the serverless publication service. A collaborative presence subscribe message may specify a subscription to a collaborative presence of a user. Upon receipt of a presence subscribe message, if there is no subscription policy with respect to the sender, the recipient may be queried for a subscription policy with respect to the sender. The subscription may be accepted in accordance with the subscription policy.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for collaboration with serverless presence, comprising:

initializing communications with a serverless publication service of a collaborative services platform;

publishing, through the serverless publication service, a collaborative presence of a user of the collaborative services platform; and

subscribing, through the serverless publication service, to at least one collaborative presence of at least one further user of the collaborative services platform.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein initializing communications with the serverless publication service comprises joining a peer-to-peer network.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein:

each user of the collaborative services platform is associated with a MeContact programmatic object; and

publishing the collaborative presence of the user comprises publishing at least some data referenced by the MeContact programmatic object.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, further comprising establishing the association between the user of the collaborative services platform and the MeContact programmatic object by, at least in part, authenticating the user to a computer operating system.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein:

each MeContact programmatic object references a presence programmatic object; and

publishing the collaborative presence of the user comprises publishing at least some data referenced by the presence programmatic object.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein data referenced by the presence programmatic object comprises:

a rich text description of the collaborative presence of the user; and

at least one collaborative endpoint of a serverless network.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein data referenced by the presence programmatic object further comprises an aggregate presence status indicator representative of the collaborative presence of the user across said at least one collaborative endpoint.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein data referenced by the presence programmatic object further comprises a collection of aggregate capabilities representative of collaborative capabilities of the user across said at least one collaborative endpoint.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein:

each of said at least one further user of the collaborative services platform is a buddy class contact of the user; and

the method further comprises querying a contact store of the collaborative services platform for said at least one buddy class contact.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising receiving, through the serverless publication service, at least one collaborative presence update notification for said at least one collaborative presence.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein:

each of said at least one further user of the collaborative services platform is a buddy class contact of the user; and

subscribing to said at least one buddy class contact comprises, for each of said at least one buddy class contact;

searching for a collaborative endpoint associated with the buddy class contact; and

if the search fails, periodically searching again until the search succeeds.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining if a subscriber is a buddy class contact; and

if the subscriber is a buddy class contact, reciprocally subscribing to the collaborative presence of the subscriber.

13. A computerized system for collaboration with serverless presence, comprising:

a plurality of collaborative endpoints associated with a plurality of users of the computerized system; and

a serverless publication service configured to, at least;

accept communicative connections from the plurality of collaborative endpoints;

publish a collaborative presence for each of the plurality of users; and

accept a plurality of subscriptions to the collaborative presence of each of the plurality of users.

14. The computerized system of claim 13, wherein:

each user of the collaborative services platform is associated with a MeContact programmatic object; and

publishing the collaborative presence of each user comprises publishing at least some data referenced by the MeContact programmatic object.

15. The computerized system of claim 14, wherein:

each collaborative endpoint is associated with a computer operating system; and

the association between the user of the collaborative services platform and the MeContact programmatic object is established, at least in part, by authenticating the user to the computer operating system.

16. The computerized system of claim 13, wherein the serverless publication service is further configured to, at least:

receive collaborative presence update notifications; and

propagate the collaborative presence update notifications in accordance with the plurality of subscriptions.

17. A computer-implemented method for collaboration with serverless presence, comprising:

receiving a collaborative presence subscribe message from a first user of a collaborative services platform specifying a subscription to a collaborative presence of a second user of the collaborative services platform;

determining if there is a subscription policy with respect to the first user;

if there is no subscription policy, querying the second user for the subscription policy for the first user; and

accepting the subscription in accordance with the subscription policy.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, wherein:

each user of the collaborative services platform has a publishable collaborative presence; and

the method further comprises;

determining if the first user is a buddy class contact of the second user; and

if the first user is a buddy class contact of the second user, sending a reciprocal collaborative presence subscribe message from the second user subscribing to the collaborative presence of the first user.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, further comprising sending the collaborative presence subscribe message through a serverless publication service of the collaborative services platform.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 19, wherein:

the second user is a buddy class contact of the first user; and

sending the collaborative presence subscribe message through the serverless publication service comprises;

searching for a collaborative endpoint associated with the buddy class contact; and

if the search fails, periodically searching again until the search succeeds.