US 7,127,675 B1 · Method and system for automatically revising software help documentation

Abstract

A method and system for establishing software documentation is provided. Rather than being static, the set of user accessible software documentation for a particular software program could be dynamically updated. The software documentation set accessible by the user may be defined by the configuration state of one or more configuration parameters at any given time. Once the states of the configuration parameters are determined, the program will dynamically update the set of accessible software documentation based at least in part on the configuration states of the configuration parameters. Thus, for any configuration state, only software documentation deemed relevant to the state of the software application could be made accessible to the user, thereby providing a more concise, focused and easily navigable set of software documentation.

Claims17

Dependent claims

A computer-implemented method comprising:

detecting a change in state of a configuration parameter in a software application while the software application is being executed;
and
responsively determining whether at least one configuration parameter in the software application has a particular configuration state matching a predefined state, and (i) if so, then dynamically revising a set of help topic descriptions available for access by a user of the software application, the help topic descriptions being associated with the software application, and (ii) if not, then not dynamically revising the set of help topic descriptions available for access by the user of the software application.

A system comprising:

a processor;
data storage;
and
machine language instructions stored in the data storage and executable by the processor to:
detect a change in state of a configuration parameter in a software application while the software application is being executed;
responsively determine whether at least one configuration parameter in the software application has a particular configuration state matching a predefined state;
and (i) if at least one configuration parameter has a particular configuration state matching a predefined state, then dynamically revise a set of help topic descriptions available for access by a user of the software application, the help topic descriptions being associated with the software application, and (ii) if the at least one configuration parameter does not have a configuration state matching the predefined state, then do not dynamically revise the set of help topic descriptions available for access by the user of the software application.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method and system for automatically revising software help documentation

Life of this patent

Method and system for automatically revising software help documentation

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims17