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US 8,146,110 B2Granted
Service platform for in-context results
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsSean Lyndersay, Miladin Pavlicic, Jane T. Kim, Jonathan Garcia, Steve Strauch, David L. Risney
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Various embodiments provide a service platform that integrates services, such as web services and/or local services, across a variety of applications. In at least some embodiments, services can be integrated with legacy applications that are “unaware” of such services, as well as applications that are aware of such services.
Claims18
One or more computer-readable storage media embodying computer readable instructions which are executable to provide a service platform comprising:
- multiple different platform layers that are designed to integrate services, both web services and/or local services, across a variety of applications, the multiple different platform layers comprising:
- a global integration layer designed to enable applications that are not service aware to allow a user to access and use services from within the applications;
- common control integration layer that provides a control that can be hosted by different applications, the control being configured to be populated with services that applications natively support as well as services which are not natively supported by the application and being configured to display a user interface that includes a list of services, the list of services including at least one service that the applications natively support and at least one service which is not natively supported by the applications, the user interface configures to receive a selection of a service from the list of services and display a preview of the selected service by displaying content from a Universal Resource Locator (URL) associated with the selected service, the selected utilizing a declarative model that includes at least a display tag that provides a name of the selected service and a preview tag that provides the URL associated with the selected service;
- and
- a custom integration layer that provides a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that can be used by applications that are aware of the APIs to receive the list of services for presentation to a user.
2 more elements
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- displaying a list of services the list of services including at least one service that is are not natively offered by an application and at least one service that is offered by the application, the at least one service that is not natively offered by the application retrieved responsive to an Application Programming Interface (API) call, the displaying taking place responsive to a user action that has taken place within the application;
- receiving a selection of a service from the list of services, the selected service utilizing a declarative model that includes at least a display tag that provides a name of the selected service and a preview tag that provides a Universal Resource Locator (URL) corresponding to the selected service;
- displaying a preview of the selected service by displaying content from the URL corresponding to the selected service;
- and
- providing, separate from the preview, access to service functionality associated with the preview.
2 more elements
A system comprising:
- one or more computer-readable storage media;
- computer-readable instructions on the one or more computer-readable storage media which, when executed, implement a method comprising:
- maintaining a service store that describes various services, the various services including at least one service that is are not natively offered by an application and at least one service that is offered by the application;
- providing an application program interface that can be called to discover the various services, wherein the application program interface can be called by different entities including an operating system, a common application-hostable control, and the application;
- receiving a call via the application program interface to discover one or more services;
- retrieving, from the service store, information associated with one more services;
- providing the information to a caller from which the call was received and
- displaying a preview of a selected service of the one or more services by displaying content from a Universal Resource Locator (URL) associated with the selected service, the selected service utilizing a declarative model that includes at least a display tag that provides a name of the selected service and a preview tag that provides the URL associated with the selected service.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.