Patent ID: 8266127

Claim:
A method of providing directed discussion, the method comprising: providing an on-line forum in a service portal; providing, an assistance list to a first user of the on-line forum in the service portal wherein the assistance list comprises identifiers of other users of the on-line forum that are members of a help group of the service portal and that are currently available to respond to queries; monitoring a user log-in procedure and user log-out procedure at the service portal; when a new user logs into the service portal: determining a technical status of the new user; and when the technical status of the new user indicates being a member of the help group, placing an identifier of the new user on the assistance list; when one of the other users identified on the assistance list logs out of the service portal, removing the identifier of the one of the other users from the assistance list; receiving a query from the first user at a server device hosting the on-line forum; parsing the query for a set of forum-moderated key words that relates to a technical issue of the first user; retrieving, using the server device, a set of profiles associated with the other users identified on the assistance list, wherein each profile in the set of profiles comprises technical expertise data associated with a respective user of the other users; searching the set of profiles associated with the other users identified on the assistance list with the set of forum-moderated key words to determine an expert user of the other users that has an associated profile with a highest number of key words in the technical expertise data that match the set of forum-moderated key words; and directing the query to the expert user.