Patent ID: 6393490
Filing Date: 2002-05-21
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A method for enabling communication between users of computer application programs and developers of computer application programs, comprising the steps of:(A) testing whether a user has initiated communication and if the user has initiated communication providing a dialog display for the user's addition of comments; (B) testing whether an event timer has fired and if said event timer has fired appending a document usage event to a message; (C) testing whether a programmatic failure has occurred and if a programmatic failure has occurred appending a application event log to said message; (D) testing whether the process of an application program has ended and if the process of an application program has ended terminating the execution of this process; (E) detecting a particular usage of a document, wherein said detected usage is a usage selected from the group consisting of viewing, copying, printing, e-mailing, linking from another document, jumping through said document, and searching said document; (F) logging said detected usage of a document; (G) compiling statistics of said logged usage; (H) sending a message communicating said logged detected usage of said document; (I) receiving said sent message communicating said logged detected usage of said document; and (J) storing said received message.