Patent ID: 7543232

Claim:
A system for providing integrated help information to users of computer programs and network-based services, said system comprising: a means for receiving from a sponsor entity specification of performance criteria associated with providing a particular help content service at a requested performance level for said users; a means enabling a service provider entity to specify service provision parameters to provide said help content service for users according to said requested performance level for said users; a means for mining available help information resources for relevant help information, extracting properties of a discovered help information, and, organizing and categorizing said discovered help information according to a help information taxonomy; a memory storage means for storing metadata entries associated with the organized and categorized discovered help content; a means for automatically registering the discovered help content as said metadata entries in said memory storage means, where said discovered help excludes predetermined decisions made by a human that are subsequently automatically executed; end-user interface means adapted to receive dynamically specified user help queries submitted by an end-user; a means for monitoring and collecting user context information relating to activities of users of the computer programs or services, said collected information including system configuration information of user devices; means for comparing collected user context information with help information taxonomies and composing a context sensitive search query based on said specified user help queries and the monitored and collected information in response to a specified user help query; means for executing the composed context sensitive search query against said memory storage means comprising said metadata entries associated with the help content, and utilizing the associated metadata to access help information comprising contextual help resources identified by the metadata; wherein said end-user interface means receives the help information identified by the metadata and renders one or more categorized links to enable end-user access to said contextual help resources; and means for collecting help content rating from said end user for use in responding to future help queries.