Organizing presence information into collections of publications

• US 20070027702A1
• Filed: 07/26/2005
• Published: 02/01/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/26/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Rang, Timothy, Cox, Shaun
• Granted Patent: US 8,356,011 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]

Abstract

A method and system for managing presence information based on collections of publications is provided. The presence system creates collections of publications for a publisher. A publication includes a type and value. A publisher may define one collection of publications that is to be made available to certain subscribers and another collection of publications that is to be made available to other subscribers. The presence system may allow a publisher to update individual publications within a collection. Moreover, the presence system may identify subscribers of a collection at the time of subscription.

Claims

1. A method for managing presence information, the method comprising:

creating collections of publications for a publisher, each publication having a type and value;

subscribing subscribers to a collection and a type of publication within the collection; and

upon receiving an update to the value of a publication of a collection,

updating the value of the publication within the collection; and

sending a notification to each subscriber to the collection and to the type of the publication within the collection.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the subscribing assigns the subscriber to a collection of the publisher with the highest rank that contains a publication of the type.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the subscribing is performed in response to a request from the subscriber to subscribe to the type of publication of the publisher.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein a collection has members and a subscriber is only subscribed to a container of which it is a member.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein a publication includes an instance identifier.

6. The method of claim 5 including generating an aggregate value for a publication of a container that has multiple publications for the same type with different instance identifiers.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein a publication specifies whether it is to be published.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein a publication includes instructions for calculating its value.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the value is updated whenever data used to calculate the value changes.

10. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for controlling a device to manage presence information, by a method comprising:

creating collections of publications for a publisher, each publication having a type and value;

receiving from the publisher an update to a specified collection;

updating a publication of the specified collection; and

notifying a subscriber to the publication of the specified collection of the update to the publication.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10 wherein the updating updates all the publications of the specified collection.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 10 wherein the updating updates only a specified publication of the collection.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 10 wherein different collections contain publications with the same type.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 10 including notifying a subscriber of an update to a publication.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 10 including receiving from a subscriber a request to subscribe to a publication of a specified type and subscribing the subscriber to the highest ranked collection that contains a publication of the specified type.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 15 wherein a collection has members and wherein a subscriber is subscribed to only collections of which the subscriber is a member.

17. A system for managing presence information, comprising:

a component that sends to a server an update to a publication, the publication having a type and value, the update identifying a collection of presence information that contains the publication to be updated; and

a component that sends to the server an indication of members who are authorized to subscribe to the publications of a collection.

18. The system of claim 17 wherein the members are authorized on a collection-by-collection basis.

19. The system of claim 17 including a component that receives from the server a notification that an entity is requesting to subscribe to presence information of the publisher and that sends to the server an indication as to whether the publisher will allow the entity to subscribe.

20. The system of claim 17 wherein an entity that requests to subscribe to a type of publication is subscribed to the highest ranked collection that contains a publication of the type.