Automated document revision trimming in a collaborative multi-user document store

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9292507-B2
Application number	US-201313969243-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 16, 2013
Priority date	Aug 16, 2013
Publication date	Mar 22, 2016
Grant date	Mar 22, 2016

Abstract

Methods, systems and techniques for managing revisions of documents in a collaborative, multiuser document store are provided. Example embodiments provide an Automated Document Revision Management Server (“ADRMS”) to automatically cluster and remove revisions of file content for easy navigation and management. Revisions are trimmed when necessary to conserve storage space. The ADRMS creates logical clusters of revisions based upon some measure of their similarities. That is, revisions that are similar and can be represented by the latest revision in the cluster formulate one cluster, and those that are markedly dissimilar are placed in a different cluster. The logic used to cluster revisions accounts for time-based factors, content-based factors, and context-based factors to determine whether a revision is incremental and can be grouped in the same cluster or is significant enough to warrant a new cluster. Revisions may be trimmed based upon age and/or available space by a revision trimming component.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method in a server computing system for trimming revisions of a file to facilitate management of revision growth, the revisions stored in a document store accessed by a plurality of users and received from a plurality of distinct client systems, the revisions previously grouped into a plurality of logical clusters, comprising:
automatically, under control of the computing system,
determining which revisions of the file are an essential revisions of the plurality of logical clusters and therefore represent their respective logical clusters and which revisions of the file are non-essential revisions of the plurality of logical clusters;
determining an amount of available space in the document store;
designating as hidden a portion of the non-essential revisions randomly chosen across the plurality of logical clusters and deleting a portion of the non-essential revisions randomly chosen across the plurality of logical clusters, wherein the portion of the non-essential revisions that are designated as hidden and the portion of the non-essential revisions that are deleted are determined based upon the determined amount of available space in the document store and age of the determined non-essential revisions; and
presenting the revisions of the file to a user by presenting indicators to each essential revision of each of the plurality of logical clusters and presenting by default only indicators to the non-essential revisions of each of the plurality of logical clusters that have not been designated as hidden or have not been deleted.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the presenting the revisions of the file to the user further comprises:
expanding the presented revisions of the file in at least one cluster of the plurality of logical clusters to show the non-essential revisions of the at least one cluster that have been designated as hidden.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the portion of the non-essential revisions that are designated as hidden and the portion of the non-essential revisions that are deleted are pre-designated lookup values indexed by the age of the non-essential revisions and the determined available space.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the portion of the non-essential revisions that are designated as hidden and the portion of the non-essential revisions that are deleted are computed by a function that takes the age of the non-essential revisions and the determined available space as parameters.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the portion of the non-essential revisions that are designated as hidden are 100% at least when the non-essential revisions are older than one month old.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the portion of the non-essential revisions that are deleted are 100% at least when the non-essential revisions are older than three months old.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein, when the determined amount of available space in the document store is 80% or less, the portion of the revisions that are hidden are 50% after the revisions are a first age, are 75% after the revisions are a second age, the second age older than the first age, and 100% after the revisions are a third age, the third age older than the second age.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7 wherein, when the determined amount of available space in the document store is 80% or less, the portion of the revisions that are deleted are 10% after the revisions are the first age, are 25% after the revisions are the second age, are 50% after the third age, and are 100% after the revisions are a fourth age, the fourth age older than the third age.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8 wherein the first age is 7 days, the second age is 14 days, the third age is 1 month, and the fourth age is 3 months.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the determining which revisions of the file are the essential revisions of the plurality of logical clusters determines that the latest revision of each of the plurality of logical clusters is the essential revision of that logical cluster.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein determining which revisions of the file are the essential revisions of the plurality of logical clusters takes into account user selections of revisions as essential revisions.

12. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing instructions for trimming revisions of a file to facilitate management of revision growth, the revisions stored in a document store accessed by a plurality of users and received from a plurality of distinct client systems, the revisions previously grouped into a plurality of logical clusters, the instructions when executed by a processor caused to perform a method comprising:
automatically determining which revisions of the file are an essential revisions of the plurality of logical clusters and therefore represent their respective logical clusters and which revisions of the file are non-essential revisions of the plurality of logical clusters;
automatically determining an amount of available space in the document store;
based upon the determined amount of available space in the document store and age of the determined non-essential revisions, automatically designating a portion of the non-essential revisions to be hidden and a portion of the non-essential revisions to be deleted, wherein which of the non-essential revisions are designated to be hidden are chosen randomly across the plurality of logical clusters and wherein which of the non-essential revisions are designated to be deleted are chosen randomly chosen across the plurality of logical clusters;
automatically presenting a list of the revisions of the file to a user by presenting an indicator to each essential revision of each of the plurality of logical clusters and presenting, by default, only the non-essential revisions of each of the plurality of logical clusters that have not been designated as hidden or deleted; and
automatically deleting the portion of the non-essential revisions designated to be deleted.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 12 wherein, upon receiving an indication to expand at least one cluster of the presented list of the revisions of the file, the method performs presenting the non-essential revisions of the at least one cluster that have been designated as hidden and that have not been deleted.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 12 wherein the portion of the non-essential revisions that are designated to be hidden and the portion of the non-essential revisions that are deleted are pre-designated lookup values indexed by the age of the non-essential revisions and the determined available space.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 12 wherein the portion of the non-essential revisions that are designated to be hidden and the portion of the non-essential revisions that are deleted are computed by a function that takes the age of the non-essential revisions and the determined available space as parameters.

16. A server computing system for trimming revisions of a file to facilitate management of revisions growth in a document store, the revisions accessed by a plurality of users and received from a plurality of distinct client systems, the revisions grouped into a plurality of logical clusters, comprising:
a memory;
a computer processor;
a revision classifier stored i

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Calkowski Grzegorz
• Zhuang Mingzhe

Classifications

• G06F16/1873

  Versioning file systems, temporal file systems, e.g. file system supporting different historic versions of files · CPC title

• G06F16/93 Primary

  Document management systems · CPC title

• G06F40/197

  Version control (for software G06F8/71) · CPC title

• G06F16/285

  Clustering or classification · CPC title

• G06F17/2288

  Physics · mapped topic