Patent Application
20070056045
With the advent of the computer age, computer and software users have grown accustomed to user-friendly software applications that help them write, calculate, organize, prepare presentations, send and receive electronic mail, make music, and the like. For example, modern electronic word processing applications allow users to prepare a variety of useful documents. Modern spreadsheet applications allow users to enter, manipulate, and organize data. Modern electronic slide presentation applications allow users to create a variety of slide presentations containing text, pictures, data or other useful objects. Modern database applications allow users to store, organize and exchange large amounts of data.
In many electronic documents, certain objects or areas are provided for which document authors and/or managers desire access control. For example, all pages of an electronic document, for example, a word processing document, a spreadsheet document, a slide presentation document, and the like, may be labeled with a legal disclaimer by the document author, and the document author and/or manager may desire that no subsequent user be allowed to access and alter or otherwise edit the legal disclaimer. Similarly, an object in a document, for example, a picture object, a text object, a data table object, and the like, may contain information such as a company logo, document retention or tracking data, or sensitive company or institution data that should not be accessed and/or changed by subsequent users of the electronic document.
In many organizations, control of such areas or objects in electronic documents is managed through education of users as to the importance of not altering certain areas or objects in organization documents. In some cases, document templates are utilized in a given organization, and all users are educated as to those areas or objects in a given template that should not be altered. In other situations, some organizations utilize employees for manually auditing organization documents from time-to-time to ensure that certain areas or objects of the organization's electronic documents are not altered. Such methods are often not effective because users of the documents may accidentally or even intentionally alter controlled document areas or objects despite the wishes of the document authors and/or managers.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.
This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the detailed description. This summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.
Embodiments of the present invention solve the above and other problems by providing methods, systems, and computer products for controlling access to designated areas or objects in an electronic document. According to aspects of the invention, a given area or object in an electronic document is designated as a controlled access region. Properties may be set on the controlled access region for prohibiting any access to the region by subsequent users. Alternatively, access may be granted to certain users via password protection or other suitable means for identifying a user as having permission to access a controlled access region.
According to another aspect of the invention, properties may be set on controlled access regions for limiting or disabling certain application functionalities that may be utilized in or on the region. According to this aspect, certain application functionalities, for example, formatting functionalities may be allowed for use against the controlled access region while other functionalities, for example, text entry and/or delete, or copy functionalities, may be disabled altogether.
According to another aspect of the invention, a controlled access region may be identified to users by a number of methods, for example, graying out the controlled access region, providing a cover screen over the region, and the like. In addition, information as to the nature of the controlled access region and help functionality associated with the controlled access region may be deployed to users upon selection or focus on a given controlled access region.
These and other features and advantages, which characterize the present invention, will be apparent from a reading of the following detailed description and a review of the associated drawings. It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention as claimed.
As briefly described above, embodiments of the present invention are directed to methods, systems, and computer products for designating areas of or objects in an electronic document as controlled access regions for prohibiting or limiting access to the regions and/or for limiting application functionalities that may be utilized in the regions. In the following detailed description, references are made to the accompanying drawings that form a part hereof, and in which are shown by way of illustrations specific embodiments or examples. These embodiments may be combined, other embodiments may be utilized, and structural changes may be made without departing from the spirit or scope of the present invention. The following detailed description is therefore not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of the present invention is defined by the appended claims and their equivalents.
Referring now to the drawings, in which like numerals refer to like elements through the several figures, aspects of the present invention and an exemplary computing operating environment will be described.
Generally, program modules include routines, programs, components, data structures, and other types of structures that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the invention may be practiced with other computer system configurations, including hand-held devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. The invention may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.
Embodiments of the invention may be implemented as a computer process (method), a computing system, or as an article of manufacture, such as a computer program product or computer readable media. The computer program product may be a computer storage media readable by a computer system and encoding a computer program of instructions for executing a computer process. The computer program product may also be a propagated signal on a carrier readable by a computing system and encoding a computer program of instructions for executing a computer process.
With reference to
According to embodiments of the invention, the application 106 may comprise many types of programs, such as an electronic mail program, a calendaring program, an Internet browsing program, and the like. An example of such programs is OUTLOOK® manufactured by MICROSOFT CORPORATION. An application 120 is illustrated and may include a number of different software applications including a multiple-functionality software application for providing many other types of functionalities. Such a multiple-functionality application may include a number of program modules, such as a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, a slide presentation program, a database program, and the like. An example of such a multiple-functionality application is OFFICE™ manufactured by MICROSOFT CORPORATION. According to embodiments of the present invention, the applications 106, 120 are illustrative of any software application with which an electronic document may be created or edited that may contain areas or objects designated as controlled access regions according to the present invention.
The computing device 100 may have additional features or functionality. For example, the computing device 100 may also include additional data storage devices (removable and/or non-removable) such as, for example, magnetic disks, optical disks, or tape. Such additional storage is illustrated in
The computing device 100 may also contain communication connections 116 that allow the device to communicate with other computing devices 118, such as over a network in a distributed computing environment, for example, an intranet or the Internet. Communication connection 116 is one example of communication media. Communication media may typically be embodied by computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data in a modulated data signal, such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism, and includes any information delivery media. The term “modulated data signal” means a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal. By way of example, and not limitation, communication media includes wired media such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, RF, infrared and other wireless media. The term computer readable media as used herein includes both storage media and communication media.
According to embodiments of the present invention, one or more areas and/or objects in an electronic document may be designated as a controlled access region. As described in detail below, once an area or object in an electronic document is designated as a controlled access region, properties may be set on the region to identify the location of the region for distinguishing user accessible space in an electronic document from controlled space (controlled access region), for denying any subsequent access to the region, for allowing limited access to the region, for controlling software functionality that may be applied to the region, and for surfacing identification information and support information for the region.
Referring to
According to embodiments of the present invention, one or more areas or objects in an electronic document 250 may be designated as controlled access regions. According to one embodiment, a document author and/or manager may utilize an authoring tool provided by the software application 106, 120, for example, a slide presentation application, word processing application, spreadsheet application, and the like, for designating one more areas or objects in a given electronic document as a controlled access region. According to this embodiment, a controlled access authoring tool may be selected, for example, by selecting the Tools button 227, for displaying one or more software tools available for use with respect to the electronic document 250. According to one embodiment, the document author may first select an area of the electronic document 250, such as the area 255 or the area 265 that the author desires to designate as a controlled access region. For example, the document author may wish that the area 255 be designated as a controlled access region for containing organization or company document control or tracking information. The area 265 may be desired as a controlled access region for containing a legal disclaimer. As should be understood, those areas or objects outside designated controlled access regions may be considered non-controlled access regions unless they are otherwise controlled in some manner.
According to one embodiment, a given area or object may be designated as a controlled access region by clicking on or otherwise selecting an area in the document, for example, by the mouse cursor 260 or other pointing device, and by drawing a box-shaped region in the document that will serve as a controlled access region. According to this embodiment, such a region represents “negative” space in the document to which access by subsequent users is controlled. As should be appreciated, other box-shaped controlled access regions may be drawn on the electronic document 250 as desired by the document author and/or manager. For example, a controlled access region may be established in the lower right-hand corner or other location of the electronic document 250 for containing other controlled information. As should be appreciated, other shapes, including circular shapes, oval shapes, multi-sided shapes, irregular shapes, etc. may be drawn by a user for designation as a controlled access region. Description of the present invention in terms of box-shaped controlled access regions is for purposes of example and is not limiting of the invention as claimed.
As described above, embodiments of the present invention are equally applicable to other types of electronic documents, for example, word processing documents and spreadsheet documents. For example, the electronic document 250 illustrated in
As briefly described above, in addition to designating a given area of an electronic document as a controlled access region, individual objects, for example, text objects, picture objects, data objects, and the like, may be designated as controlled access regions. For example, if an electronic document contains a picture object that should not be altered, edited, or otherwise changed by subsequent users of the electronic document, the picture object may be selected by the document author/manager for designation as a controlled access region in the associated electronic document. Likewise, a table object in a spreadsheet application document may be designated as a controlled access region so that subsequent users may not change data contained in the table object. Thus, according to embodiments of the present invention, individual objects contained in an electronic document may be designated as controlled access regions, or individual areas of an electronic document may be designated as controlled access regions by drawing or otherwise selecting a prescribed area in the electronic document for designation as a controlled access region.
Referring still to
Referring to the user interface 280, a first property that may be set on a designated controlled access region includes an access property. By selecting the Set Access button or control 285, the document author and/or manager may be provided additional user interface components for setting a variety of access properties on the designated controlled access region. For example, the document author may specify that access to a designated controlled access region is prohibited by any subsequent users. That is, the document author may stipulate that no access to a given controlled access region is granted to any subsequent users. For example, if the controlled access region 265, illustrated in
Alternatively, the document author and/or manager may set access properties on a given controlled access region for allowing designated persons to access the region via a password control. For example, the document author may designate that one or more users may access a given controlled access region upon presentation of a valid password for making changes to data or objects contained in the controlled access region. Referring to
As should be understood, other means of identification may be utilized instead of a password. For example, access to controlled access regions may be granted based on login permissions. That is, certain users may be provided permissions to access certain controlled access regions of a given document that has been launched after properly logging into a company or institution network. As should be appreciated, any number of mechanisms may be used for requiring identification credentials by users having access to certain controlled access regions. In addition, hardware mechanisms such as card readers, fingerprint readers and the like may be utilized for receiving identification credentials from a user desiring access to a designated controlled access region.
Referring back to
According to one embodiment, any functionality button or control in a toolbar or menu of buttons or controls that is disabled by the setting of a functionality property on a controlled access region may be “grayed-out” or otherwise identified to indicate that the associated functionality is disabled. As should be appreciated, any number of functionality limitations may be set on the contents or objects of a designated controlled access region according to embodiments of the present invention described herein. In addition, as should be appreciated, the buttons and controls illustrated in the menu 280 and the layout and location of the menu 280 are for purposes of example only and are not limiting of the number and/or types of buttons or controls that may be utilized for setting one or more properties on a given controlled access region.
Referring still to
In addition, a property may be set on a controlled access region that causes an alert, for example, a pop-up dialog, to be deployed to a subsequent user upon selection or focus on the region to distinguish the controlled access region from a non-controlled access region or to provide the user with information about the region. For example, a pop-up dialog may be presented to a subsequent user that informs the user that the selected area or object is a controlled access region and that the user may not make changes to contents or objects contained in the region. An example of such a pop-up dialog is the previously described password dialog 310, illustrated in
As described above, the controlled access regions 255, 265, illustrated in
According to this embodiment, the document author/manager may select one or more particular areas or objects of an associated electronic document and designate that only those selected areas or objects may be accessed by or operated on by subsequent users. As described above with reference to
According to embodiments of the present invention, once a controlled access region is designated, as described above with reference to
In addition, if a portion of an electronic document, for example, a paragraph, page, slide, spreadsheet, and the like, is copied for pasting into a different location in the document, or to a different document altogether, any controlled access regions designated in the copied portion are copied with the copied portion and may be pasted to the new location such that the copied controlled access regions and the associated properties applied to the copied controlled access regions are pasted to the new location. For example, if the slide document 250, illustrated in
According to embodiments of the invention, controlled access regions of an electronic document, may be established as regions in which prescribed application functionality is applied apart from controlling user access to such regions. For example, a given controlled access region may be defined for automatically receiving a prescribed layout of content by an application with which the document containing the controlled access region is being created or edited. For example, a given controlled access region may be designated for containing legal information such as copyright information. Upon launching the document, the application may parse the document to determine whether certain areas require prescribed content layout or other treatment. For the example copyright region, the application may automatically populate the region with a template for filling in copyright information by the user.
In addition, properties may be set on a given controlled access region for providing additional user interface components or functionality for a designated region. For example, a third party add-in software component may be added to the application in use for providing specialized functionality for a designated region. For example, a given region may be designated for containing specialized footnotes or endnotes. Upon selection of such a region, additional functionality, for example, specialized footnotes functionality, may be provided to the user and additional user interface components may be dynamically presented to the user for using the additional functionality on the designated region. As should be understood, regions designated for application of specialized software functionality may also be controlled with respect to access by users as described above with reference to
As described herein, areas or objects of an electronic document may be designated as controlled access regions for prohibiting or limiting access and/or application of certain functionalities to those regions. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications or variations may be made in the present invention without departing from the scope or spirit of the invention. Other embodiments of the present invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the invention disclosed herein.
