Activity Feed Routing via Authorization Tables
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Collaboration systems face challenges in securely integrating and routing activity information from external applications, as they lack mechanisms to verify user authorization levels, leading to potential unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Innovation Solution
The method involves receiving activity notifications from external applications, analyzing them to generate event items, and using relationship tables to determine authorized users, creating feed items in collaboration systems that only authorized users can access, ensuring secure and controlled dissemination of information within collaboration groups.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If collaboration systems import information from external sources, then information sharing and collaboration capabilities are improved, but security risks increase due to lack of authorization verification mechanisms
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary authorization verification mechanism that sits between external information sources and collaboration group members. This intermediary component queries external systems to verify user authorization levels before allowing access to imported information, thus enabling secure integration without compromising existing collaboration capabilities
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary authorization verification before disseminating imported information to collaboration group members. By checking authorization levels in advance through external system queries, the system prevents unauthorized access before it can occur, rather than reacting to security breaches after information is shared
2Ease of operation
If group-based access control is used to organize collaboration groups, then information organization and access control are improved, but the system cannot verify user authorization levels for externally sourced information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extends the existing group-based access control mechanism to handle both internally generated and externally imported information uniformly. The same group membership structure is used, but enhanced with additional authorization verification queries to external systems, making the system multi-functional in handling different information sources
3Productivity
If indiscriminate posting of external information is performed, then information dissemination speed is improved, but unauthorized access to sensitive information occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback loops where authorization verification results from external system queries feed back into the information dissemination process. This feedback mechanism allows the system to automatically adjust information posting based on verified authorization levels, maintaining rapid dissemination for authorized users while blocking unauthorized access
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for routing activity information related to objects in an external application to activity feeds associated with users in a collaboration group are disclosed. When activity information is received, it is routed to collaboration group feeds and user feeds based on a set of routing tables. The routing tables associated objects with events, containers, collaboration groups, and finally users. Based on the routing tables, users who belong to a collaboration groups that are associated with a particular object may see the activity information about that object rendered in an activity feed if the external application grants them permission to access the object. Accordingly, security associated with the object in the external application can be maintained when event information about that object is shared in an activity feed in a collaboration system.