International Business Machines Corporation

Ronald Pfeifer

Werner Kriechbaum

Gerhard Stenzel

Harald Daur

The present invention relates to method and system for providing online information in a networked user environment in which an end-user runs an application program and transmits data to an online server while running the application program. It is proposed to provide a request-button at the end-user application program dedicated to requesting information, and in particular help-information. When a help request is received at the communication server, a communication channel is promptly established between end-user and an agent. Information about the user activities sent in one or more transaction parts of an end-user intended business process and performed in the current application program session is read from the storage in the application server and is provided to the terminal of said agent in the help center. Advantageously, the same communication channel as used for performing the transactions is used for voice transmission for providing help or other information to the end-user.

Method of establishing a communication channel to intelligent support for ebusiness applications

The present invention describes a system and process for controlling input and output devices, in particular scanners or cameras, through application programs, where each input or output device can communicate with every application without modification of or addition to the application program and/or the input or output device software. For this, the input or output device is announced to the operating system by way of the application program as a file. The input or output device is started by means of the application program's 'Open file' function. The input or output device is announced to the operating system as a drive. A data management function takes over the communication with the driver software for the input and output as well as for the preparation of the required image formats. In this way the data access functions of the application for enabling the reading of data from files are eliminated and, in addition, its own functions for accessing input or output devices through a special interface.

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Nufringen, Germany

Ronald Pfeifer