Context Sensitive Help

• US 20090199097A1
• Filed: 02/01/2008
• Published: 08/06/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Varma, Ashwini, Black, Jason Eric
• Granted Patent: US 8,151,192 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/708
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/453 Help systems

Abstract

Systems and methods for providing context sensitive help on an electronic device. The system include a processor, an application attributes discovery module which provides one or more attributes associated with an application running on the electronic device, a system state discovery module which provides system information associated with components of the electronic device, a help infrastructure module which uses the system information and application attributes to determine a help context at the time a user invokes a request for help, a help context mapping module which includes one or more help contexts including a context node that best matches the system state information and which contains one or more help topic identifiers that are mapped to help topics, a help topic collection module that provides one or more help topics corresponding to the help topic identifiers and a help viewer that displays the help topics.

Claims

1. A system for providing context sensitive help for an electronic device, the system comprising:

an application attributes discovery module providing one or more attributes associated with an application running on the electronic device;

a system state discovery module providing system information associated with components of the electronic device;

a help infrastructure module using the system information and the attributes to determine a help context set, the help context set being determined at a time a user invokes a request for help;

a help context mapping module, the help context mapping module including one or more application contexts, the contexts including one or more help topic identifiers mapped to help topics;

a help topic collection module providing one or more help topics, the help topics corresponding to the help topic identifiers, the help topic collection module being external to the application'"'"'s executable code; and

a help viewer, the help viewer displaying the help topics;

wherein the help infrastructure module obtains a best match between the help context set and an application context and wherein help topic identifiers are selected for mapping to help topics based on this best match.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the help context mapping module is external to the application'"'"'s executable code.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the help context mapping module contains mapping tables.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the help context mapping module contains mapping tables.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the mapping tables are contained in XML files.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the attributes include the name and type of application running.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the attributes include the name and type of application running.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the attributes include an operation being performed by the application at the time the help request is made.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the system information is selected from the group consisting of:

information from the system registry, information from the clock, information from the networking stack, information from the radio stack, information from the battery driver, information from the system calendar and information regarding plug-ins being used.

10. A method for providing context sensitive help to a user of a mobile electronic device, the method comprising:

receiving a request for help from a user of the mobile electronic device;

identifying an application running on the mobile electronic device for which the request for help is being made;

evaluating attributes of the application;

determining system state information of the mobile electronic device;

obtaining a help context set from an evaluation of the attributes and the system state information, the help context set obtained at runtime when the user makes a request for help;

identifying an application context that best matches the help context set, the application context including one or more help topic identifiers;

mapping a help topic identifier to a help topic;

displaying the help topic on the mobile electronic device.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the request for help originates from a mobile phone.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the attributes including the name and type of the applications running.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the attributes including the name and type of the applications running.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein the attributes including the operation being performed by the application at the time the help request is made.

15. The method of claim 10, further wherein the system state is selected from the group consisting of:

information from the system registry, information from the clock, information from the networking stack, information from the radio stack, information from the battery driver, information from the system calendar and information regarding plug-ins being used.

16. A computer readable medium containing computer executable instructions which when executed perform a method for providing context sensitive help to a user of an electronic device, the method comprising:

receiving a request for help from a user;

identifying an application running on the electronic device for which the request for help is being made;

evaluating the attributes of the application;

determining system state information for the electronic device;

obtaining a help context set from an evaluation of the attributes and the system state information, the help context set obtained at runtime when the user makes a request for help;

identifying an application context that best matches the help context set, the application context including one or more help topic identifiers;

mapping a help topic identifier to a help topic;

displaying the help topic.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the request for help originates from a mobile phone.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the attributes include an operation being performed by the application at the time the help request is made.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the attributes include an operation being performed by the application at the time the help request is made.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the system state is selected from the group consisting of:

information from the system registry, information from the clock, information from the networking stack, information from the radio stack, information from the battery driver, information from the system calendar and information regarding plug-ins being used.