  People using consumer software applications typically do not use technical
jargon when querying an online database of help topics. Rather, they attempt to
communicate their goals with common words and phrases that describe software
functionality in terms of structure and objects they understand. We describe a
Bayesian approach to modeling the relationship between words in a user's query
for assistance and the informational goals of the user. After reviewing the
general method, we describe several extensions that center on integrating
additional distinctions and structure about language usage and user goals into
the Bayesian models.
