Document based conferencing

• US 8,943,129 B2
• Filed: 01/28/2008
• Issued: 01/27/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/28/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Pittenger, Jason T., Pegg, Nigel
• Primary Examiner(s): BAYARD, DJENANE M
• Application Number:
  US12/021,141
• Publication Number:
  US 20140032677A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,556 Days
• Field of Search: 709/204
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/101 Collaborative creation, e.g. joint development of products or services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1831 Tracking arrangements for later retrieval, e.g. recording contents, participants activities or behavior, network status

Abstract

Various embodiments described herein provide one or more of systems, methods, software, and data structures that allow a document, or other file type, to be used to connect to a network-based conference, such as over the Internet. Some embodiments may further allow a local copy of a document, viewed by each conference participant on their local computing devices, to be used as a conferencing tool by synchronizing document views across each local document copy and edits or other modifications and notations made by each participant. As a result, an actual image of the document of a document-based conference need not be shared. Rather, only the edits or other modifications and notations made by each participant are captured, transmitted, and recreated and displayed within the local document copies of the other participants.

Claims

1. A computerized method comprising:

generating an identifier of a document, the identifier of the document being a hash value generated as a function of the document;

receiving a designation of a collaboration server, the collaboration server to synchronize an action across multiple instances of the document during a collaboration session, each document instance stored locally by a collaboration session participant;

adding the identifier of the document and an identifier of the designated collaboration server within data of the document;

storing the document, including the identifier of the document and the identifier of the designated collaboration server added within the data of the document, to a local data storage device of a computer performing the computerized method, the identifier of the document and the identifier of the designated collaboration server providing information to a collaboration session participant to connect to a collaboration session based on the document.

2. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the action comprises at least one of a view action or a modification action.

3. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the document is a document created within a web-based, collaboration enabled document authoring application.

4. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the identifier of the designated collaboration server is a Uniform Resource Identifier.

5. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the generating of the identifier of the document includes generating the identifier of the document as a function of a web service call to the designated collaboration server.

6. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the adding of the identifier of the document and an identifier of the designated collaboration server within the data of the document includes:

writing metadata to the document including the identifier of the document and the identifier of the designated collaboration server.

7. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the storing of the document includes:

encoding the document according to a page description language file format specification.

8. A computerized method comprising:

accessing a first instance of a document, the first instance of the document stored locally to a computer and presenting a view of the first instance of the document on a display of the computer;

retrieving, from the first instance of the document, a Uniform Resource Identifier of a collaboration server and a document identifier associated with the first instance of the document;

connecting to a collaboration session on the collaboration server as a function of the Uniform Resource Identifier and the document identifier;

identifying a viewable area of the first instance of the document presented on the display of the computer; and

synchronizing the viewable area of the first instance of the document with a viewable area of a second instance of the document local to a computer of another collaboration session participant using data sent to and received from the collaboration server.

9. The computerized method of claim 8, wherein the synchronizing of the viewable area of the first instance of the document using the data sent to and received from the collaboration server includes:

tracking actions with regard to the first instance of the document to identify document modifications; and

sending data representative of one or more modifications to the first instance of the document.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the synchronizing of the viewable area of the first instance of the document using the data sent to and received from the collaboration server further includes:

receiving data representative of a modification to the first instance of the document; and

modifying the viewable area as a function of the received data representative of the modification to the first instance of the document.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein the data sent to and received from the collaboration server includes data representative of document modifications, the data including an identifier of at least one document location and instructions to change the at least one identified document location.

12. A system comprising:

a processing unit;

a memory device;

a display device;

an instruction set stored on the memory device, the instruction set including instructions defining system elements comprising;

a data viewing user interface to be presented on the display device; and

a conferencing module executable by the processing unit to;

extract conference connectivity data from a document stored in the memory device, a portion of the document being displayable in the data viewing interface;

connect to a collaboration server identified in the extracted conference connectivity data;

join a conference as a function of data included in the conference connectivity data;

exchange peer-to-peer connectivity data with an other conference participant via the connection to the collaboration server;

establish a peer-to-peer connection with the other conference participant according to the peer-to-peer connectivity data;

conducting the conference in whole via the established peer-to-peer connection;

receive data via the peer-to-peer connection from the other collaboration participant and present at least a portion of the received data within the data viewing user interface.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the conferencing module is further operable to:

capture data from the computer application; and

send a representation of the captured data to other conference participants via peer-to-peer connections, the captured data to be replicated to the other conference participants.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein captured data from the computer application includes one or more of additions, deletions, and modifications to data of the document.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the conferencing module when presenting at least a portion of the received data within the data viewing user interface includes:

modifying the document; and

reflecting the modifications to the document within the data viewing user interface.

16. The system of claim 12, further comprising:

one or more components operable to exchange data with other conference participants via the collaboration server.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein one of the one or more components includes a text-based chat component which is operable to allow a conference participant using the computer application to exchange textual messages with other conference participants.

18. The system of claim 12, wherein the data viewing user interface is operable to display files encoded according to a page description language file format specification.