ENHANCED COLLABORATION SERVICES

• US 20150134737A1
• Filed: 11/13/2013
• Published: 05/14/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 11/13/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Albrecht, Brian Thomas
• Granted Patent: US 10,484,189 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1818 Conference organisation arrangements, e.g. handling schedules, setting up parameters needed by nodes to attend a conference, booking network resources, notifying involved parties
• 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 12/1827 Network arrangements for conference optimisation or adaptation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/14 Session management for real-time applications in data packet communications networks H04L65/1066
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

Systems, methods, and software are disclosed herein in which a collaboration service registers users as participants in a collaboration session. As session content is received from at least one instance of various instances of a collaboration application engaged by the users, the collaboration service shares the session content with at least one other instance of the collaboration application. In addition, the collaboration service shares session information descriptive of at least a portion of the session content with at least one social network application associated with at least one user registered as one of the participants.

Claims

1. A method of operating a collaboration service comprising:

registering a plurality of users as participants in a collaboration session;

receiving session content from at least one instance of a plurality of instances of a collaboration application associated with the plurality of users;

sharing the session content with at least one other instance of the plurality of instances of the collaboration application associated with the plurality of users; and

sharing session information descriptive of at least a portion of the session content with at least one social network application associated with at least one user.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein registering the plurality of users as the participants in the collaboration session comprises registering at least a subset of the plurality of users with a plurality of service identities associated with the collaboration service and registering the one user with a social network identity associated with a social network service.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein sharing the session information comprises sharing the session information through a feature of the social network service surfaced to the one user by the one social network application, and wherein the method further comprises receiving additional session information associated with the one user and sharing the additional session information with the plurality of instances of the collaboration application.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the session content comprises an update to a document and wherein the session information comprises an alert that is descriptive of at least that the update to the document occurred.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein sharing the session content with at least the one other instance of the plurality of instances of the collaboration application comprises sharing the session content with a hosted instance of the plurality of instances of the collaboration application that is hosted in the social network service.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein registering the one user with the social network identity associated with the social network service comprises registering the one user via the hosted instance of the plurality of instances of the collaboration application.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising rendering a user interface to the collaboration service, wherein the user interface comprises a home view and a plurality of collaboration views, and wherein rendering the user interface comprises:

rendering in the home view a first plurality of interface elements through which to navigate to any of the plurality of collaboration views for participating in a plurality of collaboration sessions; and

in response to a selection of one of the first plurality of interface elements, rendering a corresponding one of the plurality of collaboration views, wherein each collaboration view of the plurality of collaboration views is associated with a different one of the plurality of collaboration sessions and includes a second plurality of interface elements through which to engage the collaboration service to participate in the different one of the plurality of collaboration sessions.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein each of the first plurality of interface elements comprises a first graphic selectable to navigate to a corresponding one of the plurality collaboration views, wherein the collaboration service comprises a plurality of features and wherein each of the second plurality of interface elements comprises a second graphic selectable to engage a different one of the plurality of features, and wherein the plurality of features comprises a content feature, a contacts feature, a whiteboard feature, a notes feature, and a plurality of communication features.

9. A method of operating a user interface to a collaboration service, wherein the user interface comprises a home view and a plurality of collaboration views, and wherein the method comprises:

presenting in the home view a first plurality of interface elements through which to navigate to any of the plurality of collaboration views for participating in a plurality of collaboration sessions; and

in response to a selection of one of the first plurality of interface elements, presenting a corresponding one of the plurality of collaboration views, wherein each collaboration view of the plurality of collaboration views is associated with a collaboration session of the plurality of collaboration sessions and includes a second plurality of interface elements through which to engage the collaboration service to participate in the collaboration session.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein each of the first plurality of interface elements comprises a graphic selectable to navigate to a corresponding one of the plurality collaboration views.

11. The method of claim 9 wherein the collaboration service comprises a plurality of features and wherein each of the second plurality of interface elements comprises a graphic selectable to engage a different one of the plurality of features.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the plurality of features comprises a content feature, a contacts feature, a whiteboard feature, a notes feature, and a plurality of communication features.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the plurality of communication features comprises a voice calling application associated with a voice calling service, a video calling application associated with a video calling service, a calendar application associated with a calendar service, and a chat application associated with a chat service.

14. The method of claim 9 wherein the second plurality of interface elements comprises a content element selectable to open a content application to access content, a contacts element selectable to open a contacts application to access contacts, a whiteboard element selectable to open a white board application, and a plurality of communication elements, each of the plurality of communication elements selectable to invoke a different one of a plurality of communication applications.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the content comprises a document available through the content application for participants in the collaboration session to edit and wherein the contacts comprise contact information for the participants with which to communicate via the plurality of communication applications.

16. One or more computer readable storage media having program instructions stored thereon for facilitating a collaboration service that, when executed by a processing system, direct the processing system to at least:

render in a home view a first plurality of interface elements through which to navigate to any of a plurality of collaboration views for participating in a plurality of collaboration sessions; and

in response to a selection of one of the first plurality of interface elements, rendering a corresponding one of the plurality of collaboration views, wherein each of the plurality of collaboration views includes a second plurality of interface elements selectable to launch at least a content application, a contacts application, and a plurality of communication applications.

17. The one or more computer readable storage media of claim 16 wherein the second plurality of interface elements comprises a content element, a contacts element and a plurality of communication elements, wherein the program instructions, when executed by the processing system, further direct the processing system to:

in response to when the content element is invoked, open a document in the content application for editing by any participants in a collaboration session;

in response to when the contacts element is invoked, open the contacts application to access contacts for the participants in the collaboration session; and

in response to when any of the plurality of communication elements is invoked through any of the contacts, open a corresponding communication application of a plurality of communication applications to communicate with a corresponding one of the participants.

18. The one or more computer readable storage media of claim 17 wherein the plurality of communications applications comprises a social network application associated with a social network service, a short message service (SMS) application associated with an SMS service, a real-time communication application associated with a real-time communication service, a calendar application associated with a calendar service, a chat application associated with a chat service, and a file hosting application associated with a file hosting service.

19. The one or more computer readable media of claim 16 wherein the program instructions further instruct the processing system to monitor session activity for each of a plurality of participants in each of the plurality of collaboration sessions to identify flagged participants, monitor local activity for at least one participant of the plurality of participants, and surface a collaboration reminder to the one participant when the local activity is associated with any of the flagged participants.

20. The one or more computer readable media of claim 16 wherein the program instructions further instruct the processing system to monitor session activity for each of the plurality of collaboration sessions to identify flagged content, monitor local activity for at least one participant of a plurality of participants, and surface a collaboration reminder to the one participant when the local activity is associated with any of the flagged content.