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Novell and WexTech Save Users Time and Effort with Natural Language Help Software WexTech's AnswerWorks Gives Help Developers a Competitive Edge with Novell Technologies and Opens Doors to Universal Software Development PROVO, Utah -- August 6, 1997 -- Software application users can now ask for help in their own words, eliminating the burden of wading through an index or trying to find the right title in the table of contents. Under a licensing agreement just announced between Novell, Inc. and WexTech Systems, Inc., online help will be faster and easier to use than ever before. WexTech's new AnswerWorks help software is built upon the Novell Collexion™ Natural Language Interface for Help (NLIH), which utilizes Novell's patent-pending Ask Me™ language technology. AnswerWorks software allows developers and help system authors to extend new and existing Windows help systems with a natural language solution quickly and easily. Users simply ask for help in their own words and AnswerWorks immediately returns a list of help topics that are most likely to contain the right information. Users then point and click to launch the help topic that solves their problem, without the need for time-consuming searches or assistance from technical support. "AnswerWorks is more than just a warm and fuzzy interface to a hard-coded, keyword index," commented Rick Oliver, senior writer at SPSS, Inc., a preeminent manufacturer of Windows statistics software. "Right out of the box, AnswerWorks found appropriate topics in our help system, even when the user queries didn't use terms from our keyword index or even terms from the actual text of the topics." WexTech is the first help authoring tool company to bring a natural language-enabled help solution to the market. The NLIH technology integrated into AnswerWorks recognizes both changes in word form (e.g., "find" and "found") and synonyms (e.g., "find" and "locate"). WexTech's AnswerWorks builds upon Novell Ask Me technology by providing a "project wizard" for the help author of an application (simplifying the development process) as well as adding an AnswerWorks end-user interface to the Windows Help topics dialog. AnswerWorks can therefore produce much better results than WinHelp's native keyword search and full-text search facilities. "Only a fraction of computer users take full advantage of help functions for software applications when they have questions, because the inquiry and information-finding process is often cumbersome and ineffective," said Rudy Montigny, vice president of linguistic development for Novell. "This licensing agreement between Novell and WexTech is a significant step forward for help technology. WexTech's AnswerWorks will make online help easier for everyone, from corporate CEOs to home users." Steve Wexler, president of WexTech Systems, added, "Integrating the Novell NLIH into our help solution has given us a considerable competitive advantage in the marketplace. AnswerWorks is like a friendly expert that users can turn to when they have questions. It significantly reduces both calls to help desks and user down time, and that means cost savings in companies' bottom lines." AnswerWorks is available in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. It can be added to any Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT help system. Pricing information and a demo version of AnswerWorks is available from WexTech at http://www.wextech.com. Novell's Collexion encompasses a suite of information retrieval tools, publishing tools, writing tools and linguistic components developed by Novell's Advanced Technology Division (ATD), the worldwide leader in linguistic technology and information retrieval development. ATD linguists and software engineers develop language-enabled technologies to make computing attractive and easy to use for the average user. ATD's solutions are not only an integral part of most of Novell's products, but are now available to third- party developers for integration into their applications. Novell's Collexion is available through OEM sales. Additional information about Novell's linguistic technologies can be accessed on the World Wide Web at http://www.novell.com/atd/. Founded in 1983, Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) is the world's leading provider of network software. The company offers a wide range of network solutions for distributed network, Internet, intranet and small- business markets. Novell education and technical support programs are the most comprehensive in the network computing industry. Information about Novell's complete range of products and services can be accessed on the World Wide Web at http://www.novell.com. WexTech Systems, Inc is a New York City-based software company specializing in Windows-based tolls for publishing printed documentation and hypertext. WexTech's products are used by over 300 of the Fortune 500 and won over 17 major industry awards. In addition to commercial products, WexTech has developed numerous custom applications for Fortune 500 companies and has done extensive consulting work for Microsoft. Information about WexTech and it's products can be accessed at http://www.wextech.com. Novell is a registered trademark. Ask Me and Collexion are trademarks of Novell, Inc.
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