Patent ID: 6473745
Filing Date: 2002-10-29
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A system for providing advice to a user of a computer program, comprising:an advice queue; an advice engine separate from the computer program and configured to communicate with the computer program; a trigger point inserted into the computer program at a point when a user running the computer program may benefit from advice, the trigger point configured to invoke the advice engine when reached; when invoked, the advice engine further configured to: 1) access at least one test condition based on information associated with the trigger point; 2) access program state data; 3) evaluate the program state data against the at least one test condition to produce a result; and 4) determine whether advice is warranted based on the result, and if so, to locate an advice template corresponding to the state data and the at least one test condition, evaluate queuing data associated with the advice template, and output information transformed from the program state data to the advice queue if the queuing data indicates that the information is appropriate for queuing; and a display process that accesses at least one display setting and outputs the information in the advice queue into visible advice displayed to a user based on the at least one display setting.