DISTRIBUTED DOCUMENT CO-AUTHORING AND PROCESSING

• US 20120192055A1
• Filed: 01/21/2011
• Published: 07/26/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/21/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Jive Software Incorporated (Wave Systems Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Jive Software Incorporated (Wave Systems Corporation)
• Inventors: Antebi, Oudi, Antebi, Roy, Bensimhon, Reem, Waisberg, Lev, Teplitzki, Arthur
• Granted Patent: US 9,367,530 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/229
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1834 implemented based on peer-to-peer networks, e.g. gnutella p2p communication protocols H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71

Abstract

A method and a device are disclosed including plug-in software components that are integrated with document processing software suites. The plug-in software components provide a set of integrated interfaces for collaborative document processing in conjunction with multiple remote file, data, and application service providers. The set of interfaces enable coauthoring a document, document merging, discovering and displaying context-sensitive metadata on a software dashboard based on permissions associated with the metadata and/or a client computing device, caching, symmetric distributed document merge with the multiple service providers, and integrated search and insertion of multimedia data in documents, among others. The documents typically include, but are not limited to formatted text documents, spreadsheet documents, and slide presentation documents.

Claims

1. A method of co-authoring a document, the method comprising:

detecting a first set of changes made to a first version of a particular document on a first client computing device;

detecting a second set of changes made to a second version of the particular document on a second client computing device; and

communicating the first set of changes and the second set of changes to the second client computing device and the first client computing device, respectively, via a third party collaboration service provider unassociated with a document processing suite used to edit the particular document.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising using a first type of document processing suite to make the first set of changes and using a second type of document processing suite to make the second set of changes.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising displaying metadata related to the particular document on a dashboard area provided by a plug-in component, associated with a document processing suite used to edit the particular document, on at least one of the first and the second client computing devices.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein displaying metadata related to the particular document on the dashboard area comprises displaying metadata according to a permission associated with at least one of the first and the second client computing devices.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein displaying metadata related to the particular document on the dashboard area comprises displaying metadata according to a selection of metadata by a user of the at least one of the first and the second client computing devices.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the metadata includes call-home comprising a location of an original copy of the particular document on the third party collaboration service provider.

7. The method of claim 3, wherein the metadata is obtained using a dynamic discovery process.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein multiple collaboration service providers are used in co-authoring the particular document.

9. A software plug-in component, configured to be integrated with a document processing suite, that when executed on a first client computing device causes the first client computing device to:

present an integrated user interface within the document processing suite, the integrated user interface configured to communicate with a third party collaboration service provider not associated with the document processing suite.

10. The software plug-in component of claim 9, further comprising a dashboard area configured to display metadata about a particular document edited using the document processing suite.

11. The software plug-in component of claim 10, wherein the metadata includes a location of an original version of a particular document on a server of the third party collaboration service provider.

12. The software plug-in component of claim 10, wherein the metadata displayed in the dashboard area is displayed according to corresponding preset permissions for the metadata.

13. The software plug-in component of claim 10, wherein the metadata is automatically obtained via a discovery process by the plug-in component.

14. The software plug-in component of claim 9, wherein the integrated user interface is further configured to simultaneously communicate with multiple third party collaboration service providers.

15. The software plug-in component of claim 14, that when executed on the first client computing device further causes the first client computing device to allow a user of the first client computing device to remotely set permissions associated with a particular document on a server of the third party collaboration service provider.

16. A method of co-authoring a document, the method comprising:

dynamically discovering metadata related to a particular document being edited using a document processing suite; and

displaying the discovered metadata in a dashboard area of a client computing device executing the document processing suite.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising communicating the discovered metadata to at least one remote client computing device.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the metadata is dynamically discovered using an autonomous software agent.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the metadata is dynamically discovered by a plug-in component integrated with the document processing suite.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the metadata includes information about the location of an original copy of the particular document on a collaboration server.