US 7,543,232 B2
Intelligent web based help system
Robert E. Easton, Jr., Sloatsburg, N.Y. (US); Neal M. Keller, Hawthorne, N.Y. (US); Juhnyoung Lee, Yorktown Heights, N.Y. (US); and Lisa M. Ungar, Shrub Oak, N.Y. (US)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y. (US)
Filed on Oct. 19, 2004, as Appl. No. 10/967,950.
Prior Publication US 2006/0085750 A1, Apr. 20, 2006
Int. Cl. G06F 15/00 (2006.01); G06F 17/00 (2006.01); G06F 3/00 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 715—708  [715/705; 715/714] 50 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
15. A method for providing integrated help information to users of computer programs and network-based services comprising:
receiving from a sponsor entity specification of performance criteria associated with providing a particular help content service at a requested performance level for said users;
enabling a service provider entity to specify service provision parameters to provide said help content service for users according to said requested performance level for said users;
during a help information build time, mining available help information resources for relevant help information, extracting properties of a discovered help information, and, organizing and categorizing said discovered help information according to a help information taxonomy;
storing metadata entries associated with the organized and categorized discovered help content in a memory storage means, where said discovery help excludes predetermined decisions made by a human that are subsequently automatically executed;
automatically registering the discovered help content as said metadata entries in said memory storage means; and,
during a help information run time, receiving dynamically specified user help queries submitted by an end-user;
monitoring and collecting user context information relating to activities of users of the computer programs or services, said collected information including system configuration information of user devices;
comparing collected user context information with help information taxonomies and composing a context sensitive search query based on said specified user help queries and the monitored and collected information in response to a specified user help query;
executing the composed context sensitive search query against said memory storage means comprising said metadata entries associated with the help content, and,
utilizing the associated metadata to access help information comprising contextual help resources identified by the metadata,
rendering the help information identified by the metadata as one or more categorized links on an end-user interface device, to enable end-user access to said contextual help resources, and
collecting help content rating, from said end user for use in responding to future help queries.