CONTACT INFORMATION MERGER AND DUPLICATE RESOLUTION

• US 20110307455A1
• Filed: 06/10/2010
• Published: 12/15/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/10/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Gupta, Amit, Kwan, Cindy, Bobde, Nikhil P., Tian, Ye, Venkateshaiah, Setty
• Granted Patent: US 8,417,696 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/692
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]

Abstract

Merger and duplicate resolution for contact information across platforms is managed employing contact objects and aggregating the contact objects into contact models. Contact data from internal and/or external data stores may be retrieved and contact objects created for each contact from each contact store. A contact model for each contact entity may be created by aggregating contact data from contact objects across the contact stores. The aggregation may include duplicate resolution through weighting of communication system types, ranking of contact information type, and similar approaches. The contact models may be dynamically updated based on changes to the contact objects.

Claims

1. A method to be executed at least in part in a computing device for managing contact information, the method comprising:

determining a plurality of data stores associated with a plurality of contacts;

retrieving a plurality of contact profiles from the plurality of the data stores; and

creating a contact model for each distinct contact by;

creating a contact object corresponding to each contact profile;

determining duplicate contact objects based on contact attributes;

aggregating the duplicate contact objects based on a ranking of the data stores; and

creating a contact model for each aggregated set of contact objects.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data stores include at least one from a set of:

a social networking directory, a custom directory, a personal directory, and an organization directory.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the contact profiles include at least one of:

dynamic contact information and static contact information.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the dynamic contact information includes presence information.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the static contact information includes at least one from a set of:

a name, an address, a role, an organization, an office, a department, a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) address, a photo, an email address, an Instant Message (IM) address, and at least one phone number.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein creating the contact object further comprises:

retrieving at least one contact attribute for each contact profile; and

storing the at least one contact attribute in the contact object.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

updating the contact objects in response to receiving an update notification from a data store.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the contact object is updated in response to at least one from a set of:

an addition of a contact profile, a deletion of a contact profile, and a modification of a contact profile metadata in one of the data stores.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein creating the contact model further comprises:

determining duplicate contact objects based on at least one matching contact attribute.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein aggregating the duplicate contact objects further comprises:

selecting a matching contact object attribute based on a weighted ranking of the contact attributes.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing the contact model in one of;

a client machine and a server.

12. A communication system for managing contact information, the system comprising:

a server configured to;

determine a plurality of data stores associated with a plurality of contact entities across different communication services associated with a user;

retrieve the plurality of contact entities from the plurality of data stores;

create a plurality of contact models corresponding to distinct contact entities by;

creating a contact object storing attributes for each contact entity;

determining duplicate contact objects based on one or more matching attributes;

aggregating duplicate contact objects based on a weighted ranking of the data stores; and

storing the contact models for access by the user.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the data stores are ranked based on at least one from a set of:

a reliability of each communication service, an update status of each data store, and user feedback.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the contact entities include one of:

a person, a conference room, and a network resource.

15. The system of claim 12, further comprising a presence server for providing presence information associated with at least a portion of the contact entities, wherein the server is further configured to update the contact models in response to one of:

a notification of a change associated with one of the contact entities from a communication service, a response to a query associated with one of the contact entities from a communication service, and an updated presence information associated with one of the contact entities from the presence server.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein aggregating duplicate contact objects comprises:

retaining attributes of contact objects from a higher ranked data store;

assigning new attributes to non-overlapping attributes of contact objects from a lower ranked data store; and

removing conflicting attributes of contact objects from a lower ranked data store.

17. The system of claim 12, wherein duplicate contact objects are determined based on matching attributes according to a weighted order of:

a name, an email address, an instant messaging address, a phone number, and an organization associated with each contact entity.

18. A computer-readable storage medium with instructions stored thereon for managing contact information, the instructions containing:

determining a plurality of data stores associated with a plurality of contact entities across different communication services associated with a user;

retrieving the plurality of contact entities from the plurality of data stores;

creating a plurality of contact models corresponding to distinct contact entities by;

creating a contact object storing attributes for each contact entity;

determining duplicate contact objects based on one or more weighted matching attributes;

aggregating duplicate contact objects based on at least one from a set of;

a reliability of each communication service, an update status of each data store, and user feedback; and

storing the contact models for access by the user at one of;

a client device associated with the user and a server.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the instructions further comprise enabling a service to:

access the contact models using a key including at least one of;

an e-mail address, an Instant Message (IM) address, a phone number, and a system generated General User Identifier (GUID);

provide at least one user interface component to enable the user to find, access, and edit the contact models; and

display one of;

the contact models and the contact entities for one of the data stores.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein the instructions further comprise:

updating the contact models in response to one of;

a notification of a change to a contact entity from a communication service, a response to a query for a status of a contact entity from one of the data stores, and a status update from a presence server.