Shared Application Contexts for Consistent Video Collaboration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Collaborative experiences during video conferences are hindered by disparate client software configurations among participants, leading to varying user experiences, delays, and inefficiencies in launching collaborative applications.
Innovation Solution
A video conference participant can invite others to collaboratively edit a document using a third-party application with an available integration, sharing a link that unfurls to display installation status, authentication information, and a user interface tailored to the client device's configuration, centralizing determinations to the video conference provider.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If each client device independently determines application installation status and generates user interface controls, then device autonomy is maintained, but user experience consistency deteriorates and redundant computations increase
Solution Approach 1:
The video conference provider server acts as an intermediary that receives the network address, determines application installation status, and generates standardized user interface controls. This centralizes the determination logic, ensuring all participants receive consistent, tailored interfaces regardless of their individual device configurations, thereby resolving the contradiction between device autonomy and experience consistency.
2Ease of operation
If client devices independently check application installation status and generate controls, then device independence is preserved, but processing time increases and resource consumption rises
Solution Approach 1:
The video conference provider performs the application installation status determination and user interface control generation in advance, before the collaborative session fully begins. By pre-processing this information centrally, the system eliminates redundant computations on each client device, reducing overall processing time and resource consumption while maintaining device independence.
3Productivity
If the system provides detailed installation status and authentication information for each device, then user experience is optimized, but information processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple information elements (installation status, authentication information, user interface controls) into a single standardized data structure generated by the video conference provider. This merging approach simplifies the information processing architecture by centralizing complexity at the server level, while client devices receive pre-processed, ready-to-use information that enhances collaborative efficiency without increasing their own complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for implementing shared application contexts during video conferences are disclosed. In an example method, a first client device joins a video conference hosted by a video conference provider. The first client device receives, from a second client device, a network address. The first client device receives, from the video conference provider, information about the network address based on the network address. The first client device renders and displays the information about the network address, in which the rendering includes one or more controls, each control associated with an action to take in response to selecting the control. The first client device receives an indication of a selection of a first control of the one or more controls. The first client device outputs a command to execute the action associated with the first control.