132 results about "User assistance" patented technology

Automated tax return preparation is provided using a relationship-based interview process coupled with universal data import. Information is collected through a process called the interview, during which a taxpayer is asked various questions about her background and relationships with financial institutions. The taxpayer provides to the tax planning software a list of financial institutions with which the taxpayer has a relationship, and the tax software retrieves tax data directly from the financial institutions. The combination of the interview, universal data import, and existing stored data enables an automated tax return system to prepare tax returns in advance with minimal user assistance.

A Cooperative Help Assistance (CHA) system and method provide real-time user assistance for one or more windows-based Graphic User Interface (GUI) applications or a single application's different subsections such as web pages, running concurrently in any operating system. The CHA System enables the development of an informative assistance object independently from the original source code or development environment of the target Host Application. The assistance object can be selected by any number of user interfaces from sophisticated inference driven interactive interface search tools or categorized lists. By intercepting and monitoring user actions on a Host Application, the CHA system performs intelligent assistance in the context of the target host application program. Utilizing a Host Application Model, the CHA System and method dynamically assemble many elements in real-time or just-in-time to produce assistance sequences or elements very efficiently without having to code every interface path permutation. Paths can be dynamically generated from the Host Application Model, which enables a real-time module to offer intelligent, contextual assistance as well as real-time construction of automated, accelerated CHA Sequences or Procedures that require little or no user interaction. All assistance and information are processed and expressed by an extensive multitasking, multimedia subsystem for two dimensional (2D) and real-time three-dimensional (3D) application interfaces, which greatly enhances and extends the effectiveness of any explanation or material expression. The production of Assistant Sequences is facilitated by the Host Application Model and 2D and 3D GUI “drag and drop” interface tools.

An answer wizard drop-down menu for providing users quick and efficient access to help utilities, including help files and wizards provided by a software application, is provided. An answer wizard drop-down edit control and interface is located in a conspicuous, but non-obstructive location on a software application graphical interface. An edit control allows a user to enter a question regarding some desired functionality of the application. In response to the user's question, the user is presented with a list of potential answers to the question in a drop-down menu. If the user finds an acceptable answer to her question in the list of potential answers, the user selects the acceptable answer, and an appropriate help file application is launched to provide the user assistance with the functionality about which the user has questions. Each question so asked by the user is saved in a list of most recently used items. The next time the user needs assistance, the user may open the list of most recently used items to obtain a list of the most recent questions previously asked by the user. The user may then, if desired, select one of the previously asked questions and initiate another search on the selected question to obtain the list of potential answers. The user may then select a new or previously viewed answer to return to the help file application.

A system for providing user assistance receives a request for user assistance from a component on a user interface. The component includes a help identifier, and the request is generated by a type of user selection, such as the clicking of an icon. The system determines a level of user assistance based on the type of selection and retrieves user assistance content based on the help identifier and the determined level of user assistance. In one embodiment, the user interface includes three levels of user assistance.

A method of authenticating a device and a user comprises receiving a user input, generating a first key from the user input, performing a physical measurement of the device, obtaining helper data for the device, computing a second key from the physical measurement and the helper data, and performing an operation using the first and second keys. In a preferred embodiment, the method comprises performing a defined function on the first and second keys to obtain a third key. Additionally security can be provided by the step of receiving a user input comprising performing a biometric measurement of the user and the step of generating a first key from the user input comprises obtaining helper data for the user and computing the first key from the biometric measurement and the user helper data.

In an example embodiment, an automated banking machine that allows a customer to employ a mobile wireless device for performing banking transactions. The customer may request assistance from a teller or other bank personnel at a remote location. An audio, and optionally video, communication may be initiated between the remote location and the customer. The customer may use either the automated banking machine, mobile wireless device, or both for communicating with the remote location.

To provide contextual user assistance for cloud services, an assistance panel is presented as part of the cloud service portal and is available in the user interface of the portal. The assistance panel can provide contextual assistance based on current user information, including task or error messages, as well as product name and user role. The assistance panel provides assistance functions including a search function, a browse syndicated community content function, and a post to a community forum function within the cloud service portal and can transform to accommodate the functions. For the browse function, the assistance panel uses the current user information to dynamically update a list of syndicated community content that can potentially match the user's needs as the user navigates to different pages presented in the portal. A content curator tool can be used to control and prioritize the content surfaced by the browse function.

The principles described herein provide methods and systems of providing new user assistance information for performing actions within a user interface as a user navigates the user interface. For example, information may be presented to the user in a way that aids the user in discovering and performing available actions within the user interface without being overly disruptive to the user.

Methods and systems for electronically tracking the progress of teams as they cover an assigned geographic area are described herein. A server computer establishes a coverage area, divides the coverage area into a plurality of regions, and assigns each region to a team. Each team carries a tracking device capable of autonomously determining its present location without user assistance, thus allowing the team to focus on the assigned task, such as searching for a missing person, plowing a field, paving a road, etc. The server monitors the location of each tracking device as each team covers its assigned region, and updates on a visually displayed geographic map a historical path associated with each tracking device based on the monitored location of each tracking device. In this manner, users can quickly view the visual depiction of the historical to determine as yet uncovered areas.

A particular customer premises equipment (CPE) device includes a display interface, a processor, and a memory accessible to the processor. The memory includes a plurality of media files that include user assistance information. The memory also includes instructions executable by the processor to access a media file of the plurality of media files and, in response to a user request for assistance, send content of the media file to a display device via a display interface.

Managing voice messages across multiple voicemail systems. A server acts as a gateway and interacts with multiple voicemail systems and with multiple user devices. The server can retrieve voice messages from one voicemail system and transmit the retrieved voice messages to another separate voicemail system without user assistance. The voice messages are transcoded as necessary. The server also enables a recipient to generate a reply voice message that can be delivered to the original sender's device or delivered to the sender in another manner, such as a Vnote, SMS or an email.

A method segments a video into objects, without user assistance. An MPEG compressed video is converted to a structure called a pseudo spatial/temporal data using DCT coefficients and motion vectors. The compressed video is first parsed and the pseudo spatial/temporal data are formed. Seeds macro-blocks are identified using, e.g., the DCT coefficients and changes in the motion vector of macro-blocks.

A video volume is “grown” around each seed macro-block using the DCT coefficients and motion distance criteria. Self-descriptors are assigned to the volume, and mutual descriptors are assigned to pairs of similar volumes. These descriptors capture motion and spatial information of the volumes. Similarity scores are determined for each possible pair-wise combination of volumes. The pair of volumes that gives the largest score is combined iteratively. In the combining stage, volumes are classified and represented in a multi-resolution coarse-to-fine hierarchy of video objects.

A help service includes proxying a web application page between a user web browser and a web application server. The help service includes providing the web application page to a customer service representative (CSR) web browser and opening a live communication channel for human communication between a user and a customer service representative. In some embodiments, from within a user network, a user help request is generated from a user web browser and received from a help server. The web application page may be transmitted over the Internet to the CSR web browser. In some embodiments, the CSR web browser may operate as a COMET client, the user web browser may act as an AJAX server-side processor, and the user web browser may operate as a COMET client for receiving updates to the web application page.

A portable information terminal stores first function list information indicating the contents of functions installed on a first vehicle. When a user carrying the terminal gets in a second vehicle before driving, the second vehicle acquires the first function list information from the terminal. The second vehicle compares the acquired first function list information with second function list information indicating the contents of functions installed on the second vehicle. The second vehicle acquires a functional difference between itself and the first vehicle and notifies the user of the difference.

A compiler tool is provided to selectively solicit assistance from a programmer in order to improve optimization of code compiled by the compiler. As a program is being compiled, the compiler keeps track of the places where it could do better if it only knew certain information. The user is presented with one or more pieces of advice that each identify a problem that prevented the compiler from making a particular optimization due to not enough information and one or more suggestions as to how to provide additional information to the compiler. This list is generally filtered so that only a subset of missing information that has a high likelihood of leading to better performance is presented. Other missing information is not requested.