Method and system for on-demand communities

• US 8,660,992 B2
• Filed: 07/20/2012
• Issued: 02/25/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/04/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Inventors: Yoshida, Norimasa, Grenney, Jamie Veere Coleman, Lin, Likuo, Lin, Justin
• Primary Examiner(s): Hoang, Son T
• Application Number:
  US13/554,934
• Publication Number:
  US 20120311054A1
• Time in Patent Office: 585 Days
• Field of Search: 707/661, 707/681
• US Class Current: 707/661
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/437 Administration of user profiles, e.g. generation, initialisation, adaptation, distribution
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/51 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0483 Interaction with page-structured environments, e.g. book metaphor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 2230/00 Voting or election arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/046 Interoperability with other network applications or services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

In an embodiment, communities are generated on demand. In this specification a community is a group of webpages in which users share ideas with one another by posting ideas and sending messages for one another to read. An on-demand community is a community that may be created via tools specialized for creating communities, with just a few keys strokes and/or mouse clicks and by adding information (e.g., about the members and/or the topic or set of topics that the community is focused upon), such that a community may be established within a short amount of time, such as a few minutes or a few hours. Optionally, the communities may be initially populated with ideas related to a particular topic or set of topics. Optionally, each member may be provided with tools for establishing one or more profile page and/or one or more friend pages.

Claims

1. A computer program product, comprising a non-transitory computer usable medium having a computer readable program code embodied therein, the computer readable program code adapted to execute a method for implementing on-demand communities, the method comprising:

receiving a request from a user to post an idea on a profile page of the user, wherein the profile page includes at least a collection of personal data of the user;

in response to receiving the request, posting the idea on the profile page;

sending at least one idea webpage having existing ideas posted thereon to the user, wherein the at least one idea webpage has tools for receiving votes from the user for the posted existing ideas;

linking the posted idea on the profile page of the user to the at least one idea webpage; and

allowing other users to view and vote on the posted idea of the user;

wherein the profile page includes;

information related to a number of votes received for the posted idea of the user, and

a facility for the other users to send messages to the user.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, the user being an administrator that administrates a tenant'"'"'s portion of a multi-tenant database.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, the webpage including one or more webpages having one or more Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) in a format appropriate for copying the one or more URLs.

6. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the profile page further includes a discussion in which the user participates.

7. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the profile page further includes a list of friends of the user.

4. A method for implementing on-demand communities, comprising:

receiving a request from a user to post an idea on a profile page of the user, wherein the profile page includes at least a collection of personal data of the user;

in response to receiving the request, posting the idea on the profile page;

sending at least one idea webpage having existing ideas posted thereon to the user, wherein the at least one idea webpage has tools for receiving votes from the user for the posted existing ideas;

linking the posted idea on the profile page of the user to the at least one idea webpage; and

allowing other users to view and vote on the posted idea of the user;

wherein the profile page includes;

information related to a number of votes received for the posted idea of the user, and

a facility for the other users to send messages to the user.

5. A system for implementing on-demand communities, comprising:

a computer processor; and

one or more stored sequences of computer instructions which, when executed by the computer processor, cause the computer processor to carry out the following steps of;

receiving a request from a user to post an idea on a profile page of the user, wherein the profile page includes at least a collection of personal data of the user;

in response to receiving the request, posting the idea on the profile page;

sending at least one idea webpage having existing ideas posted thereon to the user, wherein the at least one idea webpage has tools for receiving votes from the user for the posted existing ideas;

linking the posted idea on the profile page of the user to the at least one idea webpage; and

allowing other users to view and vote on the posted idea of the user;

wherein the profile page includes;

information related to a number of votes received for the posted idea of the user, and

a facility for the other users to send messages to the user.