Management of delegates for participants that are mentioned in a communication session

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11985100-B2
Application number	US-202217845902-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 21, 2022
Priority date	Jun 21, 2022
Publication date	May 14, 2024
Grant date	May 14, 2024

Abstract

The techniques disclosed herein provide systems that provides delegation for unavailable participants that are mentioned in a communication session, such as a channel, chat session, email thread, meeting chat, etc. When a system detects that a person, also referred to herein as a “primary participant,” is mentioned in a message, e.g., an “@mention” or “@name” is detected, and the system detects that the mentioned person has set an out-of-office reply or otherwise indicated an unavailable status, the system automatically identifies a delegate and packages the immediate message including “@name” and the message thread including the immediate message, and sends the packaged communications to the delegate. Permissions are also modified so that a computer associated with the delegate can display messages of the thread and send messages to the thread on behalf of mentioned person. When the delegate responds, the system directs the response to reply to the main thread.

First claim

We claim:

1. A method for managing permissions for a delegate assigned to a participant of a message thread, the method for execution on a system, the method comprising:
analyzing messages of the message thread to identify a message comprising a user reference, wherein the user reference includes an identifier of the participant embedded within a portion of the message;
in response to determining that the message comprises the user reference including the identifier of the participant, analyzing status information to determine that the status information indicates that the participant associated with the user reference is unavailable;
in response to determining that the status information indicates that the participant associated with the user reference is unavailable, analyzing data defining one or more delegate assignments to identify the delegate that is assigned to receive messages of the message thread and assigned to respond to the message thread as a representative for the participant associated with the user reference;
in response to determining that the status information indicates that the participant associated with the user reference is unavailable and that the delegate is assigned to respond to the message thread as a representative for the participant: modifying permissions to generate modified permissions for the message thread to grant the delegate access rights to receive a message thread container comprising the messages of the message thread and the message comprising the user reference, and
communicating at least a portion of the message thread container to a computing device associated with the delegate, the portion of the message thread container comprising the messages of the message thread and the message comprising the user reference of the participant, wherein the modified permissions cause the computing device associated with the delegate to display the messages of the message thread and the message comprising the user reference.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving a reply message from the computing device associated with the delegate; and
directing the reply message to the message thread container comprising the messages of the message thread, wherein the message thread container causes the reply message to be displayed with a display of the message thread, a position of the reply message being in proximity to the message comprising the user reference, wherein the system causes a display of one or more graphical elements showing a visual relationship between a display of the reply message and a display of the message comprising the user reference.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein modifying permissions for the message thread comprises generating the modified permissions to grant the delegate access rights to write the reply message to the thread container, using the modified permissions, the system permits the computing device associated with the delegate to submit the reply message to the message thread without requiring the delegate to be a member of the message thread.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: causing the computing device associated with the delegate to display at least the portion of the messages of the message thread and a portion of the message comprising the user reference in a group container, wherein the folder group container is selectable by a user input for causing display of the portion of the messages of the message thread and the message comprising the user reference within a region reserved for the messages.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the delegate is a first delegate assigned to a specific thread, wherein the one or more delegate assignments identify a second delegate that is assigned to receive messages for individual threads that are each associated with individual delivery interfaces, wherein individual delivery interfaces include at least one of a channel, a chat, or a file type, or a file name, wherein the modified permissions are configured to allow the second delegate to receive messages for individual threads and reply to the individual threads, wherein the method further comprises communicating at least a portion of a second message thread container to a computing device associated with the second delegate, the portion of the second message thread container comprising the messages of a second message thread and the message of the second message thread comprising the user reference of the participant, wherein the modified permissions cause the computing device associated with the second delegate to display the messages of the second message thread and the message of the second message thread comprising the user reference.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: selecting a subset of the messages of the message thread, wherein individual messages of the subset of the messages have a threshold relevancy level with the message comprising the user reference, wherein communicating the at least the portion of the message thread container to the computing device associated with the delegate comprises communicating the subset of the messages to the computing device associated with the delegate.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the system restricts the analysis of the delegate assignments to identify the delegate in response to determining that the participant associated with the user reference is available.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the system does not allow the modification to the permissions for the message thread to grant the delegate access rights to receive data of a message thread container in response to determining that the participant associated with the user reference is available.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: generating a graphical element providing notice that the delegate is assigned to the message thread, that the status information indicates that the participant is unavailable, and that the user reference was added to the message of the message thread.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the user reference is included in the message of a chat thread, wherein the message of the chat thread is received from another user other than the participant.

11. A system for managing permissions for a delegate assigned to a participant of a message thread, the system comprising:
one or more processors; and
a computer-readable storage medium having encoded thereon computer-executable instructions to cause the one or more processors to:
analyze messages of the message thread to identify a message comprising a user reference, wherein the user reference includes an identifier of the participant embedded within a portion of the message;
in response to determining that the message comprises the user reference including the identifier of the participant, analyze status information to determine that the status information indicates that the participant associated with the user reference is unavailable;
in response to determining that the status information indicates that the participant associated with the user reference is unavailable, analyzing data defining one or more delegate assignments to identify the delegate that is assigned to receive messages of the message thread and assigned to respond to the message thread as a representative for the participant associated with the user reference;
in response to determining that the status information indicates that the participant associated with the user reference is unavailable and that the delegate is assigned to respond to the message thread as a representative for the participant:
modify permissions to generate modified permissions for the message thread to grant the delegate access rights to receive a message thread contain

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc
• Microsoft Licensing Tech Llc

Inventors

• Rathi Hitesh
• Ramdas Vijay

Classifications

• H04L51/21 Primary

  Monitoring or handling of messages · CPC title

• H04L51/04

  Real-time or near real-time messaging, e.g. instant messaging [IM] · CPC title

• H04L51/07

  characterised by the inclusion of specific contents · CPC title

• H04L63/101 Primary

  Access control lists [ACL] · CPC title

• H04L51/043

  using or handling presence information · CPC title