REAL-TIME SHARING OF DOCUMENT EDITS

• US 20160328368A1
• Filed: 06/26/2015
• Published: 11/10/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 05/04/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Hyams, Brian Gaiennie, Keslin, Michelle Elena, Dagenais, Amelie, Rudd, Jordan Spencer, Amirzhanov, Yessen Yessetovich, Taleghani, Ali, Sachdeva, Jitesh, Snyder, Daniel Robert, Piaseczny, Michal
• Granted Patent: US 10,909,080 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1767 Concurrency control, e.g. optimistic or pessimistic approaches
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/194 Calculation of difference between files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/101 Collaborative creation, e.g. joint development of products or services

Abstract

Systems and methods for enabling the real-time sharing of document edits are disclosed herein. Documents being edited may use backing stores that are not originally compatible to share edits in a coauthoring environment and thus require additional attention before coauthoring edits can be shared in real-time. The systems and methods described may provide for the analysis of high level functions within the document editor to determine the underlying activities. Both the high level functions and underlying activities may be analyzed to determine whether it is safe to implement the changes they represent in real-time on an endpoint. When it is determined that the changes are safe to implement, the changes will be implemented and further real-time edits will be shared. When it is determined that the edits are not safe to implement, real-time updates will be suspended until the next selected-time update, at which time real-time sharing will recommence.

Claims

1. A system for improving the functionality of a computing device participating in a coauthoring environment by recording document model changes at an editor for safe transmission over a network in real-time to an endpoint in accordance with a document model, comprising:

a backing store listener, operable to receive a change to a backing store of the document model to observe low level activities that comprise the change;

a recording module, operable to receive the low level activities observed by the backing store listener to create a record of the change;

a safety analyzer, operable to analyze the record of the change and determine whether the change is safe to implement in real-time; and

a gating module, operable to translate the change into a schema intelligible by the endpoint, and further operable to, in response to determining that the change is safe to implement in real-time, transmit the schema to the endpoint.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the recording module is further operable to group multiple low level activities into a high level activity to enable the safety analyzer to analyze the high level activity and the low level activities that comprise the change to determine whether the change is safe to implement in real-time.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the safety analyzer is further operable to access a blacklist to determine whether the change is safe to implement in real-time.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the schema is formatted according to Java Script Object Notation (JSON) and includes an identifier indicating a state of the document model on the editor.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the schema includes a transmitted identifier operable to indicate a status of a section affected by the change, wherein the transmitted identifier corresponds to an endpoint identifier and enables the endpoint to discard the change when the identifier and the endpoint identifier do not match.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the record of the change indicates a type of section of the document model affected by the change, wherein the type of section includes at least one of:

a word;

a sentence;

a paragraph;

an image;

a header;

a footer;

a comment;

a document;

a footnote;

an endnote;

a table;

a chart; and

a text box.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the safety analyzer is further operable to determine whether the change is safe to implement in real-time based on a number of low level activities comprising the change.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the endpoint uses a different backing store than the editor.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein if the safety analyzer determines that the change is not safe to implement in real-time, the change is not transmitted in real-time to the endpoint.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein if the change is not transmitted in real-time, the change is transmitted in selected-time.

11. A method for improving the functionality of a computing device participating in a coauthoring environment by recording document model changes at an editor for safe transmission over a network in real-time to an endpoint in accordance with the document model, comprising:

receiving a change to a document;

observing low level activities that comprise the change;

analyzing the low level activities to determine whether the change is safe to be implemented in real-time on the endpoint; and

when it is determined that the change is safe, translating the change into a schema and transmitting the schema to the endpoint.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein analyzing the low level activities to determine whether the change may be implemented safely in real-time on the endpoint further comprises analyzing at least one of:

a number of the low level activities comprising the change;

a high level activity assembled from the low level activities; and

an object affected by the change.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

when it is not determined that the change is safe, not transmitting the change in real-time and instead transmitting the change in selected-time.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

transmitting a selected-time update of the document model to the endpoint whereby the endpoint is enabled to update each section of the document model based on the selected-time update.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the selected-time update is transmitted in response to the editor implementing a save of the document model.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the selected-time update occurs periodically in response to an auto-save operation.

17. A method for improving the functionality of a computing device participating in a coauthoring environment by recording document model changes at an editor for safe transmission over a network in real-time to an endpoint in accordance with the document model, comprising:

receiving at the endpoint a schema, wherein the schema is mutually interpretable by the editor and the endpoint to indicate a change made by the editor to a document being coauthored;

analyzing the change to determine whether the change is safe to implement on the endpoint in real-time;

when it is determined that the change is safe to implement, implementing the change in real-time on the endpoint;

when it is determined that the change is not safe to implement, freezing a section on the endpoint corresponding to a section on the editor in which the change was made; and

in response to receiving a selected-time update, unfreezing the section on the endpoint and implementing the change.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein analyzing the change to determine whether the change is safe to implement on the endpoint in real-time includes comparing the change against a whitelist of changes that are safe to implement in real-time.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the whitelist is hosted by a server accessible to the editor and the endpoint.

20. The method of claim 17, wherein analyzing the change to determine whether the change is safe to implement on the endpoint in real-time further comprises:

comparing a state of the section on the editor with a state of the section on the endpoint;

determining that the change is safe to implement when the state of the section on the editor matches the state of the section on the endpoint; and

determining that the change is not safe to implement when the state of the section on the editor does not match the state of the section on the endpoint.