REAL TIME DOCUMENT PRESENTATION DATA SYNCHRONIZATION THROUGH GENERIC SERVICE

• US 20130110937A1
• Filed: 11/01/2011
• Published: 05/02/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/01/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Burns, Charles, Mathew, Abraham, Saliba, Hani, Venugopal, Subalakshmi, Godiyal, Apeksha, Bissat, Jade
• Granted Patent: US 10,007,734 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/205
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/103 Workflow collaboration or project management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1822 Conducting the conference, e.g. admission, detection, selection or grouping of participants, correlating users to one or more conference sessions, prioritising transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4015 where at least one of the additional parallel sessions is real time or time sensitive, e.g. white board sharing, collaboration or spawning of a subconference

Abstract

A generic means for synchronizing information about a user'"'"'s view of a document or other content within an application across native client and web applications is provided. Attendees of an online broadcast are enabled to see what the presenter is seeing within their own application. In addition, meeting-specific information such as the meeting time and notes may be synchronized enabling nearly real time synchronization. Moreover, by enabling attendees to view the presented document within their own applications, the attendees are afforded the capabilities provided by that application, such as navigating through the document manually.

Claims

1. A method executed at least in part in a computing device for synchronizing document presentation data in an online broadcast, the method comprising:

providing content to a plurality of attendees;

receiving a state information update from a presenter based on a status of the content at a client application associated with the presenter;

providing the state information update to the plurality of attendees; and

enabling the plurality of attendees to view the content at respective client applications associated with the attendees employing the state information update to maintain a real time synchronization between the presenter and the attendees.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising enabling the attendees to navigate and control the content at their respective client applications independently from the presenter.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising enabling the attendees to re-synchronize viewing of the content at their respective client applications with the presenter using the state update information.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the respective attendee client applications include one of a rich client application and a browser for accessing a web application.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising enabling the attendees to access the content using capabilities of the rich client application.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the state information update includes data associated with at least one from a set of:

a timing, positional information, and a flow of media as processed at the presenter'"'"'s client application.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the state information update further includes at least one from a set of:

a broadcast time, notes associated with the broadcast, and an identification of the presenter.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing the state information at an in-memory store of a server facilitating the broadcast for a duration of the broadcast.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving the state information update from the presenter in response to a change of content status at the presenter'"'"'s client application.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving the state information update periodically from the presenter to enable resilience of a broadcast session in case of server failure.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the content includes one or more of:

word processing documents, spreadsheet documents, presentation documents, audio media, video media, graphic presentations, email, and textual and/or graphical documents.

12. A server for facilitating synchronization of document presentation data in an online broadcast, the server comprising:

a memory;

a processor coupled to the memory, the processor executing a host application, wherein the host application is configured to;

provide content to a plurality of attendees;

receive a state information update from a presenter based on a status of the content at a client application associated with the presenter;

provide the state information update to the plurality of attendees;

enable the plurality of attendees to view the content at respective client applications associated with the attendees employing the state information update to maintain a real time synchronization between the presenter and the attendees;

enable the attendees to navigate and control the content at their respective client applications independently from the presenter; and

enable the attendees to re-synchronize viewing of the content at their respective client applications with the presenter using the state update information.

13. The server of claim 12, wherein the server further facilitates a content sharing service configured to:

expose a presenter service with functions for starting and stopping a broadcast session and for uploading a current state of the presentation.

14. The server of claim 12, wherein the host application is further configured to:

enable the presenter to present from a native rich client application.

15. The server of claim 12, wherein the host application is further configured to:

ensure data integrity of the content for providing the presenter confidence that a presented document is in its current state and that the presented document remains unchanged for a duration of the broadcast.

16. The server of claim 15, wherein the host application is further configured to:

ensure the data integrity of the content by making a copy of the content and broadcast the copy.

17. The server of claim 12, wherein the state information is modeled as a data structure.

18. The server of claim 12, wherein the host application is associated with one of:

a multimodal online communication service, an online collaboration service, and a web service.

19. A computer-readable memory device with instructions stored thereon for synchronization of document presentation data in an online broadcast, the instructions comprising:

providing content to a plurality of attendees;

receiving a state information update that includes data associated with at least one from a set of;

a timing, positional information, and a flow of media as processed at a presenter'"'"'s client application from the presenter based on a status of the content at a client application associated with the presenter;

providing the state information update to the plurality of attendees;

enabling the plurality of attendees to view the content at respective client applications associated with the attendees employing the state information update to maintain a real time synchronization between the presenter and the attendees;

enabling the attendees to navigate and control the content at their respective client applications independently from the presenter; and

enabling the attendees to re-synchronize viewing of the content at their respective client applications with the presenter using the state update information.

20. The computer-readable memory device of claim 19, wherein the instructions further comprise:

in response to switching from the presenter to another presenter, continuing to receive state information updates from the other presenter, wherein the state information update further includes an identification of the other presenter.