HARNESSING INFORMATION ABOUT THE TIMING OF A USER'S CLIENT-SERVER INTERACTIONS TO ENHANCE MESSAGING AND COLLABORATION SERVICES

• US 20090299934A1
• Filed: 06/01/2009
• Published: 12/03/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/16/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Horvitz, Eric J., Apacible, Johnson T.
• Granted Patent: US 8,019,834 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/45
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/404 characterised by control arrangements for compensation, e.g. for backlash, overshoot, tool offset, tool wear, temperature, machine construction errors, load, inertia G05B19/19, G05B19/41 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/043 using or handling presence information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/214 using selective forwarding
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/224 providing notification on incoming messages, e.g. pushed notifications of received messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/226 Delivery according to priorities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• 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 67/55 Push-based network services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information

Abstract

A system and method is provided to facilitate communication and collaboration by considering the timing of a user'"'"'s activities on one or more clients via accessing, from a centralized server, information about the user'"'"'s client-server interactions. The systems and methods can harness existing protocols and data exchange used in legacy client-server applications for email, making available to one or more client-side message routing applications, information about a user'"'"'s interactions with email across multiple clients. Applications include considering the time since the last client-server interaction to guide decisions about if, when, and how to route messages so as to limit the mobile relay of information a user has already seen, providing information to colleagues about a user'"'"'s current or past “inbox presence,” and forecasting the time until a user will have access to a device or communication channel.

Claims

1. (canceled)

4. (canceled)

7. (canceled)

8. (canceled)

10. (canceled)

13-23. -23. (canceled)

24. A computer readable medium having a data structure stored thereon, comprising:

a first data field describing a user'"'"'s presence information;

a second data field describing a routing policy for a message; and

a third data field describing a routing destination for the message.

2. The system of claim 24, the routing component is employed by at least one of a notification system, a priorities system, the client application, and the server application to facilitate delivery of the messages.

3. The system of claim 24, the routing component includes one or more rules for delivering messages between systems.

5. The system of claim 24, the server application is an exchange email server.

6. The system of claim 24, the activity component monitors, records or caches user presence information to identify prospective locations of a user with respect to a message routing system.

9. The system of claim 24, the routing component specifies via that mobile messaging should not occur until the messages have not been either present at the client application or at the server for some time that is passed or that will pass.

11. The system of claim 24, the model includes at least one of an inference model, a probability model, and a statistical model that predicts when and/or where the user desires to receive messages.

12. The system of claim 24, the model employs past or current evidence of a user'"'"'s comings and goings that relate to presence of the user.

25. The computer readable medium of claim 24, further comprising at least one of an activity field, a time field, and a device field.

26-33. -33. (canceled)