ARCHITECTURE FOR LARGE DATA MANAGEMENT IN COMMUNICATION APPLICATIONS THROUGH MULTIPLE MAILBOXES

• US 20160269339A1
• Filed: 06/11/2015
• Published: 09/15/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/09/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Ramaswamy, Dheepak, Ramaswamy, Sanjay, Tung, Le-Wu, Yang, Song, Zbogar-Smith, Julian, Kohli, Gagandeep, Srinivasan, Sowmy, Janardhan, Kamal
• Granted Patent: US 10,530,725 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/42 Mailbox-related aspects, e.g. synchronisation of mailboxes

Abstract

Technologies are described to increase a data limit for a user by introducing additional archive mailboxes as the original archive fills up or subsequently added archive mailboxes fill up. Thus, a user'"'"'s data limit may be effectively removed through the use of additional archive mailboxes. In some examples, the additional mailboxes may be integrated into the architecture of the communication application such that their use is transparent to the user and/or an administrator of the communication application or associated service through the use of an application programming interface (API) that exposes a single multivalued strongly typed collection instead of dealing with multiple attributes and extending the schema every time a new type needs to be added. A mailbox locations attribute may act as the main storage of serialized mailbox locations and a mailbox identifier attribute may be used for indexing.

Claims

1. A method executed on a computing device to provide an infrastructure for large data management in a communication application through multiple mailboxes, the method comprising:

providing a generic storage for serialized mailbox information associated with one or more additional mailboxes, wherein the one or more additional mailboxes are created upon detection of a predefined size threshold of a mailbox associated with a user being reached; and

enabling storage and retrieval of communication application related data in the one or more additional archive mailboxes for one or more functionalities of the communication application in a transparent manner to the user through an application programming interface (API) that uses the generic storage for serialized mailbox information.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

exposing a single multivalued strongly typed collection to access the one or more additional archive mailboxes through the API.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the single multivalued strongly typed collection includes a mailbox identifier attribute, a database location attribute, and a mailbox location type attribute.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

enabling a call using the mailbox identifier attribute to locate a mailbox of any type.

5. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

employing a mailbox location attribute as main storage of serialized mailbox locations, wherein the mailbox location attribute has a value that includes links.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the mailbox location attribute further includes a binary payload with a serialized mailbox location string.

7. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

employing the mailbox identifier attribute for indexing, wherein the mailbox identifier attribute is a multivalued string.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

updating the mailbox identifier attribute in response to an entry being added to or removed from the mailbox locations attribute; and

preventing the mailbox identifier attribute from being modified during mailbox moves to reduce a probability of data loss.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

employing object level validation to mitigate the data loss.

10. A computing device to provide an infrastructure for large data management in a communication application through multiple mailboxes, the computing device comprising:

a memory configured to store instruction associated with the communication service; and

one or more processors configured to execute one or more applications associated with the communication service in conjunction with the instructions stored in the memory, wherein the one or more applications include;

a communication application configured to facilitate exchange of communication in a plurality of modes between users; and

a data management application configured to manage communication application related data through mailboxes associated with the users and user groups, wherein the data management application is further configured to;

provide a generic storage for serialized mailbox information associated with one or more additional mailboxes, wherein the one or more additional mailboxes are created upon detection of a predefined size threshold of a mailbox associated with a user being reached; and

enable storage and retrieval of communication application related data in the one or more additional archive mailboxes for one or more functionalities of the communication application in a transparent manner to the user through an application programming interface (API) that exposes a single multivalued strongly typed collection to access the one or more additional archive mailboxes.

11. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the data management application is further configured to:

enable use of cmdlets to find a mailbox location for a particular directory service user.

12. The computing device of claim 11, wherein the data management application is further configured to:

enable use of cmdlets to find multiple mailbox locations for a user associated with multiple mailboxes by appending multiple mailbox location type attributes to a search parameter.

13. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the data management application is further configured to:

employ a mailbox location attribute as main storage of serialized mailbox locations, wherein the mailbox location attribute has a value that includes links and a binary payload with a serialized mailbox location string.

14. The computing device of claim 13, wherein the data management application is further configured to:

employ the mailbox identifier attribute for indexing, wherein the mailbox identifier attribute is a multivalued string and the mailbox identifier attribute is updated in response to an entry being added to or removed from the mailbox locations attribute.

15. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the data management application is further configured to:

create, modify, and maintain objects associated with the single multivalued strongly typed collection at an abstraction layer.

16. The computing device of claim 13, wherein the communication application related data includes one or more of emails, calendar items, attachments, tasks, contact cards, online conference recordings, audio communication recordings, video communication recordings, and text messages.

17. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the plurality of modes includes one or more of an email exchange, a messaging exchange, an online conference, an audio communication, a video communication, a data sharing session, an application sharing session, and a desktop sharing session.

18. A computer-readable memory device with instructions stored thereon to provide an infrastructure for large data management in a communication application through multiple mailboxes, the instructions comprising:

providing a generic storage for serialized mailbox information associated with one or more additional mailboxes, wherein the one or more additional mailboxes are created upon detection of a predefined size threshold of a mailbox associated with a user being reached; and

enabling storage and retrieval of communication application related data in the one or more additional archive mailboxes for one or more functionalities of the communication application in a transparent manner to the user using an application programming interface (API) by exposing a single multivalued strongly typed collection to access the one or more additional archive mailboxes through the API, wherein the single multivalued strongly typed collection includes a mailbox identifier attribute, a database location attribute, and a mailbox location type attribute.

19. The computer-readable memory device of claim 18, wherein the instructions further comprise:

creating pointers in a main archive mailbox for folders stored in the one or more additional archive mailboxes; and

redirecting calls to access content in the folders stored in the one or more additional archive mailboxes to respective ones of the one or more additional archive mailboxes.

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

automatically moving folders among available archive mailboxes to load balance stored data in relation to a designated storage quota for each mailbox.