Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Ghim-Sim Chua

Davide Massarenti

Sridhar Chandrashekar

Majeed D Salman

Anthony S Chavez

Pierre Jacomet

Michael Meulemans

Avronil Bhattacharjee

Daniel Li

A system and method for providing help contents uses a framework for unified help access that provides a single point of entry through which a user may access help contents relating to all system software and hardware components. The help contents from different sources are organized into a taxonomy structure that allows a user to navigate easily to locate relevant help topics. The contents of the help topics may reside locally or be accessible over the Internet, and may contain static as well as active components. The unified help framework is extensible, allowing the help topics and the taxonomy to be updated by means of update packages. The application for providing the unified presentation of help topics may be launched by a user as well as from programs.

System and method for providing help contents for components of a computer system

Described is a system and method for searching multiple disparate search engines. More particularly, a search system provides search engine manager that operates to provide a standard interface with which one or more search engines may be queried through a search client. The search system being extensible, allows for the addition of search engines beyond the time of the initial construction of the search system. Each search engine, being wrapped around a COM (component object model) object, first registers with the search system through the wrapper, the wrapper providing communication between the search engine manager and the search engine. When initiated by a client, a query is transmitted to the search engines in series, the search engines execute the query in parallel, and the results are returned asynchronously to the client.

System and method for searching multiple disparate search engines

The present invention manages information about support incidents on a computer. The invention gathers information about a support incident, associates the support incident with a support channel, and collects current and historical information from the computer. Implementations of the invention may also package and send the gathered and collected information to a support vendor. The invention comprises methods of performing these tasks, systems that perform them, computer-readable media that contain computer-executable instructions that when executed perform the methods or provide the systems, and data structures stored on computer-readable media having fields that represent software objects useful in performing the methods or providing the systems.

Methods and systems for reporting and resolving support incidents

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Ghim-Sim Chua