Collaborative invitation system and method

• US 20060242639A1
• Filed: 04/25/2005
• Published: 10/26/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/25/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Singhal, Sandeep K., Rao, Ravi T., Manion, Todd R., Weisberg, Tomer, Thaler, David G., Gupta, Rohit
• Granted Patent: US 7,752,253 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/169
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A set of collaborative contacts may be selected with an invitation user interface. An invitation to participate in a collaborative activity may be sent to the selected contacts from the invitation user interface or from a collaborative application. The invitation may be received by a collaborative services platform. A user of the collaborative services platform may be presented with the invitation along with an ability to choose one of accept, decline and ignore in response to the invitation. The user may choose to accept, decline or explicitly ignore the invitation, and a response may be sent to the sender of the invitation indicating the user'"'"'s choice. An application programming interface for a collaborative invitation service of the collaborative services platform may include an invitation element, a send invitation element, a respond to invitation element and a cancel invitation element. The cancel invitation element may be used to cancel issued invitations.

Claims

1. A computer readable medium having thereon computer-executable instructions for collaborative invitation comprising:

selecting at least one contact with an invitation user interface;

determining if an invitation is to be sent to said at least one contact from the invitation user interface;

if it is determined that the invitation is to be sent from the invitation user interface then, at least;

launching a collaborative application; and

sending the invitation from the invitation user interface; and

otherwise, at least;

launching the collaborative application; and

sending the invitation from the collaborative application.

2. The medium of claim 1, wherein the invitation user interface is a graphical user interface of an invitation service.

3. The medium of claim 1, wherein:

the instructions further comprise selecting a collaborative activity with the invitation user interface; and

launching the collaborative application comprises launching a collaborative application associated with the collaborative activity.

4. The medium of claim 1, further comprising storing invitation details for retrieval by the collaborative application.

5. The medium of claim 1, wherein sending the invitation comprises sending the invitation with a send invitation element of an application programming interface of an invitation service.

6. The medium of claim 5, wherein the application programming interface of the invitation service comprises:

the send invitation element;

a respond to invitation element for responding to the invitation; and

a cancel invitation element for canceling the invitation.

7. The medium of claim 1, wherein sending the invitation comprises, for each of said at least one contact:

determining a set of endpoints for the contact; and

for each endpoint in the set of endpoints, at least;

establishing a communication connection to the endpoint; and

sending the invitation to the endpoint over the communication connection.

8. The medium of claim 7, wherein:

a representation of each contact includes a contact programmatic object instance that references a set of endpoint programmatic object instances; and

determining a set of endpoints for the contact comprises;

querying the contact programmatic object instance corresponding to the contact for the set of endpoint programmatic object instances; and

if the set of endpoint programmatic object instances is empty, determining the set of endpoints for the contact with a contact location service.

9. A computer readable medium having thereon computer-executable instructions for collaborative invitation comprising:

receiving an invitation to participate in a collaborative activity;

presenting the invitation to a user of a collaborative services platform along with an ability to choose one of accept, decline and ignore in response to the invitation;

receiving the choice of the user; and

sending a response to the sender of the invitation, the response including an indication of the choice of the user.

10. The medium of claim 9, wherein:

the invitation is received at an endpoint of the collaborative services platform; and

the instructions further comprising determining if the endpoint is capable of participating in the collaborative activity.

11. The medium of claim 10, wherein:

the invitation includes a specification of a set of capabilities required to be able to participate in the collaborative activity;

the collaborative services platform includes a registry of capabilities of the endpoint;

determining if the endpoint is capable of participating in the collaborative activity comprises comparing the set of capabilities specified by the invitation to the registered capabilities of the endpoint.

12. The medium of claim 9, wherein:

the invitation is received at one of a standard communications port for the collaborative services platform and a nonstandard communications port specific to a collaborative application;

if the invitation is received at the standard communications port and the user chooses to accept the invitation, the instructions further comprise;

storing at least some information contained in the invitation for retrieval by the collaborative application;

launching the collaborative application; and

beginning the collaborative activity; and

if the invitation is received at the nonstandard communications port and the user chooses to accept the invitation, the instructions further comprise beginning the collaborative activity.

13. The medium of claim 12, further comprising:

launching the collaborative application; and

creating an invitation listener on a nonstandard communications port for the collaborative application.

14. The medium of claim 9, wherein sending the response to the sender of the invitation comprises sending the response with a respond to invitation element of an application programming interface of an invitation service.

15. A computer readable medium having thereon computer-executable instructions implementing an application programming interface for a collaborative invitation service comprising:

an invitation element for providing access to invitation data corresponding to an invitation to participate in a collaborative activity;

a send invitation element for sending the invitation to at least one contact of a user of a collaborative services platform;

a respond to invitation element for responding to the invitation; and

a cancel invitation element for canceling the invitation.

16. The medium of claim 15, wherein the invitation data comprises:

an invitation identifier; and

at least one capability identifier.

17. The medium of claim 15, wherein:

the send invitation element comprises a send secured invitation element for secured sending of the invitation; and

the application programming interface further comprises a send unsecured invitation element for unsecured sending of the invitation.

18. The medium of claim 15, wherein:

the send invitation element comprises an asynchronous send invitation element for asynchronously sending the invitation; and

the application programming interface further comprises a synchronous send invitation element for synchronously sending the invitation.

19. The medium of claim 15, further comprising a create invitation listener element for instantiating an invitation listener at a collaborative endpoint.

20. The medium of claim 15, further comprising:

a register capability element for registering collaborative capabilities with the collaborative invitation service;

an unregister capability element for deregistering collaborative capabilities with the collaborative invitation service; and

an enumerate capabilities element for enumerating capabilities registered with the collaborative invitation service.