Patent ID: 6981222
Filing Date: 2005-12-27
Classification: G06F,G06Q,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A system for passing communications between a manufacturer and a manufacturer's customer, the system comprising: a customer interface for passing communications to and from a customer; an application server in communication with said customer interface comprising an application level protocol for receiving customer communications from the customer interface and, in response to said customer communication, generating a message; a client interface in communication with said application server for passing messages to and from said application server; a remote back-office database server coupled to said client interface, the back-office database server providing access to data which is desired by the customer wherein the data is in the form of representations of a plurality of business documents; means for relating the plurality of business documents according to a previously established progression, the previously established progression defining the relationships between different types of business documents as they are encountered in a typical business environment and defining allowed navigation paths between the plurality of business documents; means for displaying the previously established progression as a hierarchical tree structure of representations of business documents, the tree structure having at least one branch, wherein: means for selecting a particular document instance node; and means for displaying information contained in the representation of a business document associated with a selected document instance node.