Community-based software application help system

摘要

A framework for enabling a community of users to share help information about an application program. The framework includes a mechanism for users to generate and share help information and a mechanism for users to access help information created by other users. To generate help information, tools may be incorporated into an application to enable users to capture information about the application as they are performing functions. Those tools capture as a video clip a representation of screen displays created by the application as the user interacts with the application to perform a function about which help information is to be generated. Along with the scenes captured in the video clip, application context information and explanatory material, such as an audio narration, can be captured. The mechanism to access help information includes a server to which video clips can be posted and cataloged, allowing identification of clips in response to user input describing a required help topic.

主权项

1. A method of providing help information in connection with an application program, the method comprising:
displaying, by a computing device, a user interface of the application program for receiving user interactions, the user interface of the application program presenting a control display area having controls to perform application functions of the application program for processing a document associated with the application program; executing a plug-in for the application program, the plug-in presenting additional controls in the control display area, the additional controls including a control to create a video clip of help information related to one or more application functions of the application program and a control to search for available help information provided by an online community system hosted by a server; in response to selection of the control to create the video clip of help information, capturing video information depicting user interactions with the application program; automatically capturing context information maintained by the application program via the plug-in, the context information recorded by the application program during the user interactions with the application program, the context information including user input received by the application program and commands processed by the application program in response to selection of one or more of the controls to perform application functions of the application program; generating searchable tag information based on the context information for aiding identification of the video clip in a future search, the searchable tag information indicating the application program and at least one specific application function performed during the user interactions with the application program; in response to determining that the user interactions with the application program have completed, generating the video clip of help information based on the captured video information depicting the user interactions with the application program; and uploading the video clip of help information with the searchable tag information to the online community system for indexing the video clip of help information based on the application program and the at least one specific application function performed during the user interactions with the application program, wherein:
the online community system is accessible to a plurality of users,the online community system is configured to provide access to the video clip of help information based on the searchable tag information, andselection of the control to search for available help information presents a dialog box for submitting a query to the online community system.