Personalized account migration system and method

• US 7,836,197 B2
• Filed: 10/30/2007
• Issued: 11/16/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/27/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Esaya.com, Inc.
• Inventors: Kasiraja, Mark, Isaac, Tomy K.
• Primary Examiner(s): Dharia; Rupal D
• Assistant Examiner(s): Duong; Thomas
• Application Number:
  US11/980,048
• Publication Number:
  US 20080065779A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,113 Days
• Field of Search: 709/230, 709/217, 709/219, 709/245, 709/232
• US Class Current: 709/232
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services

Abstract

A method for migrating information, and a migrator for migrating information, are disclosed. The method may include extracting organizational information from at least two service providers, accessing a first at least one of the at least two service providers upon selection of a migration selection interface by the user, receiving of a first plurality of information related to the user from one of the service providers, accessing a second at least one of the at least two service providers, and writing the first plurality of information to the second at least one of the at least two service providers. The migrator includes an importer in communicative connection with at least one migrate-from service provider, a normalizer that receives a first plurality of information from the importer and converts the first plurality to a standard format, a denormalizer that receives the standard format from the normalizer and converts the standard format to a second plurality of information, and an exporter communicatively connected to a migrate-to service provider, which exporter receives the second plurality of information from the denormalizer and sends the second plurality to the migrate-to service provider.

Claims

1. A migrator for migrating personalized services embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium executable by a computer, comprising:

a database comprising at least one organizational information protocol corresponding to at least one provider of services;

an importer in communicative connection with at least one migrate-from provider of services, which said at least one migrate-from provider of services has been selected by a user;

a normalizer that receives a first plurality of information from said importer according to said at least one organizational information protocol corresponding to said at least one migrate-from provider of services and converts said first plurality of information to a standard format;

a denormalizer that receives said standard format from said normalizer and converts said standard format to a second plurality of information according to said at least one organizational information protocol correspondent to a migrate-to provider of services; and

an exporter communicatively connected to said migrate-to provider of services, which said exporter receives said second plurality of information from said denormalizer and sends said second plurality to said migrate-to provider of services.

2. The migrator claim 1, further comprising an extractor that extracts an organizational information protocol from at least two providers of services, wherein the first plurality is normalized in accordance with the organizational information protocol correspondent to the migrate-from provider of services, and wherein the second plurality is denormalized in accordance with the organizational information protocol correspondent to the migrate-to provider of services.

3. The migrator claim 1, wherein said importer uses control messages to import the first plurality of information from the migrate-from provider of services.

4. The migrator of claim 1, wherein said importer is unique to each provider of services, and imports according to an organizational information protocol of the migrate-from provider of services.

5. The migrator claim 1, wherein the standard format is xml.

6. The migrator of claim 5, wherein said normalizer includes an xml generator that generates the xml.

7. The migrator of claim 1, wherein said denormalizer parses the standard format according to a DTD used to normalize the standard format, and thereby denormalizes the information.

8. A method for migrating personalized services, said personalized services embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium executable by a computer, including the steps of:

extracting organizational information from at least one provider of services to form at least one organizational information protocol;

selecting a first provider of services from said at least one provider of services, said first provider of services having a first corresponding organizational information protocol;

accessing said first provider of services;

receiving, according to the organizational information protocol correspondent to said first provider of services, a first plurality of information from said first provider of services, upon said accessing said first provider of services;

accessing a second provider of services from said at least one provider of services, said second provider of services having a second corresponding organizational information protocol; and

writing said first plurality of information to said second provider of services according to the second organizational information protocol correspondent to said second provider of services.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said first plurality of information comprising a contact list, personalized data, and preferences.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein said at least one provider of services comprises banking and financial services, email services, on line calendar and address book services, mysite.com pages, bill payment services, application service providers, ISP services, wireless customization services, shopping services, online trading services, and online auction services.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the banking and financial services further comprise payment of a mortgage, a loan, a balance transfer, account balances, filling out of forms, credit checks, digital signal encryption, electronic transfer formatting and location, and login and password information.

12. The method of claim 8 wherein said at least one provider of services further comprises career services, professional services, and social services.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the career services further comprise employee, salary, payroll and job title information.

14. The method of claim 8 wherein said at least one provider of services is a wireless service provider.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein said first plurality of information comprises a wireless calling plan, telephone type, calling history, web-phone setup and web-phone preferences.

16. The method of claim 8, wherein the step of extracting organizational information from the at least one provider of services to form at least one organizational information protocol further comprises using the login and password information of at least one user.

17. The method of claim 8, wherein the step of extracting organizational information from the at least one provider of services to form at least one organizational information protocol further comprises placing said organizational information protocol into a database.

18. The method of claim 8, wherein the step of extracting organizational information from the at least one provider of services to form at least one organizational information protocol further comprises spidering the at least one provider of services.

19. The method of claim 8, wherein the step of extracting organizational information from the at least one provider of services to form at least one organizational information protocol further comprises scraping the at least one provider of services.

20. The method of claim 8, wherein the step of extracting organizational information from the at least one provider of services to form at least one organizational information protocol further comprises:

entering the at least one provider of services as a browser;

parsing the at least one provider of services;

mapping the organizational information protocol to a standard format.

21. The method of claim 8, wherein the at least one provider of services provides said organizational information protocol to the extracting party.

22. The method of claim 8, wherein said organizational information protocol further comprises the manner of organization, information entry methods, and information extraction methods of the at least one service provider.

23. The method of claim 8, wherein the at least one service provider performs the migration.

24. The method of claim 8, wherein the at least one service provider provides a link for a customer to access a migration provider.