Community-based software application help system

• US 20090132918A1
• Filed: 11/20/2007
• Published: 05/21/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 11/20/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Swami, Sunil, Raikes, Jeff, Deyo, Roderic C., Pratley, Christopher, Sahasrabudhe, Sandeep
• Granted Patent: US 8,977,958 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/705
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/453 Help systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A framework for enabling a community of users to share help information about an application program. The framework includes a mechanism for users to generate and share help information and a mechanism for users to access help information created by other users. To generate help information, tools may be incorporated into an application to enable users to capture information about the application as they are performing functions. Those tools capture as a video clip a representation of screen displays created by the application as the user interacts with the application to perform a function about which help information is to be generated. Along with the scenes captured in the video clip, application context information and explanatory material, such as an audio narration, can be captured. The mechanism to access help information includes a server to which video clips can be posted and catalogued, allowing identification of clips in response to user input describing a required help topic.

Claims

1. A method of creating an on-line community having a plurality of users, the on-line community providing user help in connection with an application program, the method comprising:

capturing in a video clip images of a user interaction with the application program;

automatically capturing metadata related to the context to the application program during the user interaction; and

uploading the video clip with the metadata to a server accessible to the plurality of users.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically capturing metadata comprises recording a focus of an executing application program performing the at least one application function.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the application comprises a command stack and automatically capturing metadata comprises capturing information in the command stack.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the application comprises an un-do stack and automatically capturing metadata comprises capturing information in the un-do stack.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving user input of the metadata.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

indexing the video clip based on the metadata.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein indexing the video clip comprises generating searchable tag information from the metadata.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein generating searchable tag information comprises generating the searchable tag information on a tagging server.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising storing the searchable tag information on a storage server.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein generating searchable tag information further comprises generating tag information based on audio portions of the video clip.

11. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

receiving a help request from a user device; and

searching for video clips with help information responding to the help request based on the searchable tag information.

12. The method of claim 7, further comprising providing to the user device a thumbnail of a video clip responding to the help request.

13. The method of claim 6, wherein generating searchable tag information comprises generating the searchable tag information on a computer executing the application.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the metadata comprises searchable tag information and capturing metadata comprises computing the searchable tag information from context information relating to the application.

15. At least one computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions adapted for execution on a computer to categorize audio-video clips created for sharing help information associated with an application program, the method comprising:

receiving an audio-video clip, the audio-video clip comprising video data graphically representing a plurality of user interactions with the application;

receiving metadata related to contents on the audio-video clip; and

automatically generating tag information based on the metadata to facilitate categorizing and identifying the audio-video clip in a future search.

16. The at least one computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the computer-executable instructions for automatically generating tag information are recorded in computer-readable media associated with a tagging server, and when executed, create tags related to the metadata.

17. The at least one computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the computer-executable instructions for automatically generating tag information are recorded in computer-readable media associated with a client computer, and when executed, create tags related to the metadata.

18. The at least one computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the computer-executable instructions further comprising computer-executable instructions for categorizing audio-video clips into groups based on the automatically generated tag information.

19. The at least one computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the computer-executable instructions further comprise computer-executable instructions for storing automatically generated tag information in an online database where audio-video clips are accessible to online user searching.

20. At least one computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions adapted for execution on a computer having a display and creating help information associated with an application program, the computer-executable instructions, when executed, for:

operating the application program, the application program adapted to perform at least one application function based on input from a user, the at least one application function comprising receiving user input through at least one application control displayed on the display as part of a control display area;

creating the audio-video clip, the audio-video clip comprising video data graphically representing the plurality of user interactions;

recording context information related to context of the application during at least a portion of the plurality of user interactions;

uploading the audio-video clip to an online database;

generating searchable tag information based on the recorded context information;

receiving a search request for help information; and

searching the online database for an audio-video clip responding to the search request.