Patent Document ID: 8484181
Application ID: 12905011
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method comprising: receiving information regarding a plurality of experts at a question and expert matching system; storing, by the question and expert matching system, a plurality of expertise tags associated with each one of the respective experts; determining, by the question and expert matching system, a plurality of related items for each expert tag by comparing the expertise tag with related items for the expertise tags in a database of related items; generating, by the question and expert matching system, an expertise cloud for each expert of the plurality using the received information of experts, wherein the expertise cloud comprises the related items corresponding to the expertise tags for the expert and the expertise cloud is weighted based on a relative importance of each expertise tag; receiving, by the question and expert matching system, a question from a user; generating a plurality of related items associated with the question; generating, by the question and expert matching system, a question cloud for the question, wherein the question cloud comprises the related items corresponding to the question and the question cloud is weighted based on a relative importance of the related items of the question; searching, by the question and expert matching system, for one or more expertise clouds matching the question cloud by determining, by the question and expert matching system, weighted matches between the related items of the question clouds and the related items of the expertise clouds to find expertise clouds associated with the one or more related items in the question cloud to derive a respective question-component-to-expertise-tag-path score S QRT between each expertise cloud and the question cloud; determining, by the question and expert matching system, experts associated with the found matching expertise clouds by generating a list of ranked matching expertise clouds based on the S QRT of the found expertise clouds based on whether an expertise cloud has a threshold degree of relevancy to a question cloud; and routing, by the question and expert matching system, the question to an expert associated with a matching expertise cloud included in the list of ranked matching expertise clouds.