PROVIDING CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION AUTOMATICALLY

• US 20070071187A1
• Filed: 09/07/2006
• Published: 03/29/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/26/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Boyer, Marc, Shtiegman, Eran, Aulakh, Sahib, McNeill, Thomas, Apreutesei, Elena, Shao, Frank, Simnett, Edward
• Granted Patent: US 7,702,798 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/93.10
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/575 Means for retrieving and displaying personal data about calling party
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72436 for text messaging, e.g. short messaging services [SMS] or e-mails
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4365 based on information specified by the calling party, e.g. priority or subject
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/0054 where the data service is an electronic mail service

Abstract

A facility is described for providing contextual information automatically. In various embodiments, the facility receives an indication to start a conversation, automatically determines an identification for an item indicated by the indication, encodes the identification in a message, and sends the message so that a recipient of the message can locate the item. The facility can include a responder component and an initiator component. The initiator component can receive an identification for contextual information and an identification of the responder, initiate a conversation with the responder'"'"'s computing device, and automatically encode the received indication of the contextual information in a message that it sends to the responder component so that the responder component can cause a link to the contextual information to be provided that, when selected, causes an application executing on the responder'"'"'s computing device to load the contextual information. In various embodiments, the facility receives a message containing an indication of contextual information, decodes the indication to determine an identifier for the contextual information, and provides a command for loading the contextual information.

Claims

1. A method performed by a computer system for providing contextual information automatically, comprising:

receiving an indication to start an instant messaging conversation (902), the indication associated with a selected item, the selected item establishing contextual information for the conversation;

automatically determining an identification for the selected item (904);

encoding the identification in a message (1010); and

sending the message with the encoded identification (1012) so that a recipient of the message can locate the selected item.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the indication to start the instant messaging conversation is received from an application.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the application receives a command to start the instant messaging conversation from a user when the selected item is selected.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the selected item is an electronic mail message.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the selected item is a web page.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the selected item is a record that is retrieved from a database.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the identification uniquely identifies the selected item.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the unique identification is a Uniform Resource Locator.

9. The method of claim 7 wherein the unique identification is encoded into a header field of the message.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the receiving includes receiving the indication to start the instant messaging conversation from an application, the encoding includes encoding an identification that uniquely identifies the selected item, and the message is a Session Initiation Protocol INVITE message.

11. A system for providing contextual information automatically, comprising:

a responder component (816) associated with a responder'"'"'s computing device; and

an initiator component (810) associated with an initiator'"'"'s computing device that receives an identification for contextual information and an identification of the responder, initiates a conversation with the responder'"'"'s computing device, and automatically encodes the received indication of the contextual information in a message that it sends to the responder component so that the responder component can cause a link to the contextual information to be provided to the responder that, when selected, causes an application executing on the responder'"'"'s computing device to load the contextual information.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the initiator component receives the identification for contextual information and the identification of the responder via an associated application program interface component.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the application program interface component receives the identification for contextual information and the identification of the responder from an application.

14. The system of claim 11 wherein the responder component provides the link to the responder via an application program interface component that is associated with an application.

15. The system of claim 11 wherein the application loads the contextual information from a database.

16. The system of claim 11 wherein the application searches a storage device for contextual information corresponding to the contextual information identified in the message.

17. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause a computer system to perform a method of providing contextual information automatically, the method comprising:

receiving a message initiating an instant message conversation (1104), the message containing an indication of contextual information, the indication automatically added to the message when a user who initiated the conversation initiated the conversation in association with the indicated contextual information;

decoding the indication to determine an identifier for the contextual information (1112); and

providing a command to a user for loading the contextual information (1114).

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the receiving includes receiving a Session Initiation Protocol message containing a header field identifying the contextual information.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 further comprising providing the command to the user when the user responds to a telephone call.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 19 wherein the telephone call employs a Voice over Internet Protocol.