Web based client/server notification engine

• US 20070198677A1
• Filed: 01/24/2006
• Published: 08/23/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 01/24/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ozhan, Ozan, Simpson, Russell, Van Eaton, James
• Granted Patent: US 8,015,152 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/04 Real-time or near real-time messaging, e.g. instant messaging [IM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/224 providing notification on incoming messages, e.g. pushed notifications of received messages
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/966 Distributed

Abstract

Various technologies and techniques improve the updating of client content in a client/server arrangement. A client notification engine of a user interface subscribes to receive notifications from a central server side notification engine. The client notification engine polls the server side notification engine at a specified interval. The server side notification engine receives and aggregates notifications about and/or from one or more sources and aggregates them into a collection of relevant notifications. These notifications are sent to the client where the different subscriptions originated and are then used by the user interface in the client to update part of the content being displayed as appropriate.

Claims

1. A method for improving client-side content updates comprising the steps of:

receiving a request from a user interface to access a communications application that allows a user to manage information retrieved from at least one data store located on a separate computer;

sending a request to a central notification engine to register for a plurality of notifications, the notifications including a plurality of information updates that the communications application wishes to receive;

at a particular time interval, sending a polling request to the central notification engine to determine whether at least a portion of content in the at least one data store has changed for the requested notifications;

receiving a notification response from the central notification engine, the notification response including updated information retrieved by the central notification engine from the at least one data store; and

updating the user interface based on the notification response.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the updating the user interface step further comprises updating a set of folder counts for a particular set of folders displayed in the user interface, the folder counts identifying a number of unread items present in each of the particular set of folders.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the updating the user interface step further comprises updating a status bar to display at least one indicator to indicate whether one or more new messages have been received.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the at least one indicator is selected from the group consisting of a new email indicator, a new fax indicator, a new voice mail indicator, and a new reminder indicator.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the new reminder indicator is selected from the group consisting of a calendar reminder indicator and a task reminder indicator.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the notification response includes a combined response for the plurality of notifications.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the central notification engine is located on a web server.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one data store is located on a separate computer from the central notification engine.

9. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for causing a computer to perform the steps recited in claim 1.

10. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for causing a computer to perform steps comprising:

receiving a request from a client application to register for a plurality of notifications;

creating a condition advisor for at least a first folder in a particular set of folders, the condition advisor being operable to track a modified status for the first folder;

creating an item count advisor for at least a second folder in the particular set of folders, the item count advisor being operable to track a count associated with one or more items in the second folder;

creating an event queue for new notifications for at least a third folder in the particular set of folders, the event queue being operable to store at least a portion of information about new notifications that are received;

communicating with at least one data store at specified data gathering time intervals to update the condition advisor, item count advisor, and event queue as a set of data in the data store changes;

receiving a polling request from the client application after a specified polling interval passes;

checking at least the condition advisor and item count advisor to determine whether there are one or more notifications to report to the client application;

generating a notification response that includes at least a portion of the information in the condition advisor, item count advisor, and event queue; and

transmitting the notification response to the client application.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the checking step further comprises checking the event queue as part of determining whether there are one or more notifications to report.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the generating the notification response step further comprises determining what portion of the information is relevant to a current context of a user and including only the relevant information in the notification response.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the item count advisor for the second folder is operable to track a number of unread items in the second folder.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein item count advisor for the second folder is based upon a total number of items in the second folder.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the condition advisor for the first folder is based upon whether the first folder has a portion of content that has been changed.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the new notifications are selected from the group consisting of an email message, a fax message, a voice mail message, and a reminder message.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the first folder and the second folder are a same folder.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the client application is a browser based application.

19. A system for facilitating content updates in an application comprising:

a server, the server being operable to communicate with a client over a network;

the server being further operable to communicate with at least one data store over a network; and

wherein the server provides a central notification engine service, the central notification engine service being operable to perform a set of operations comprising the steps of;

receiving a request from a client application located on the client to register for a plurality of notifications;

creating an advisor indicator for each of a plurality of folders, the advisor indicator being operable to track whether a particular set of data in the data store has changed;

communicating with at least one data store at specified data gathering time intervals to update the advisor indicator for each of the folders as a set of data in the data store changes;

receiving a polling request from the client application after a specified polling interval passes;

checking the advisor indicator for each of the folders to determine whether there are one or more notifications to report to the client application; and

reporting the one or more notifications to the client application in a response.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the server is further operable to create an item count advisor for each of the folders and a condition advisor for each of the folders.