Patent Application
20240331130
This application is based on and claims priority under 35 USC 119 from Japanese Patent Application No. 2023-051804 filed Mar. 28, 2023.
The present disclosure relates to an image processing system, a non-transitory computer readable medium, and an image processing method.
Suppose a case where a service provider company installs a multifunction peripheral in the office or the like of a customer to provide services. If a failure occurs on the multifunction peripheral, the service provider investigates the failure and takes a measure for early resolution or the like. The early resolution is more likely to be achieved by analyzing a failure occurrence environment and data and then reproducing the failure.
However, there are quite a few customers who refuse to provide data. Hence, for example, Japanese Patent No. 6847590 proposes technology for generating data excluding confidential information by performing machine learning on the basis of data having a failure. Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2014-235568 is also an example of the related art.
Suppose a case where print data having a failure is acquired after the print data is processed. Even though the acquired print data is analyzed as failure reproduction data, information regarding the failure indicating, for example, what failure actually occurs and where the failure occurs is not extracted successfully, and thus the failure reproduction does not necessarily succeed reliably.
Aspects of non-limiting embodiments of the present disclosure relate to enabling part of failure print data for failure reproduction use to be extracted more reliably than in a case where a user does not designate information regarding the failure.
Aspects of certain non-limiting embodiments of the present disclosure address the above advantages and/or other advantages not described above. However, aspects of the non-limiting embodiments are not required to address the advantages described above, and aspects of the non-limiting embodiments of the present disclosure may not address advantages described above.
According to an aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided an image processing system including a processor configured to: receive location information indicating an occurrence location of a failure that has occurred on a printed material and that is designated by a user and substance information indicating substance of the failure, the printed material being generated by printing based on print data; with reference to the received information, extract, from the print data, a part to be used for reproducing the failure; and generate failure reproduction information including the extracted part.
An exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure will be described in detail based on the following figures, wherein:
Hereinafter, an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure will be described on the basis of the drawings.
The customer system 1 includes the multifunction peripheral 10, user terminals 101, and a gateway (GW) 102 that are connected to a LAN 103. The customer system 1 is connected to the external network 2 with the GW 102 interposed therebetween. Each user terminal 101 is an example of an information processing apparatus and is used by a user who uses the multifunction peripheral 10. The user transmits a print job, for example, from one of the user terminals 101 to the multifunction peripheral 10 and thereby causes the multifunction peripheral 10 to perform printing. The multifunction peripheral 10 performs printing in accordance with print jobs each transmitted from a corresponding one of the user terminals 101 connected to the LAN 103 in a wired or wireless manner; however,
The service system 3 is configured such that a service server 30 and a GW 302 are connected to a LAN 303. The service system 3 is connected to the external network 2 with the GW 302 interposed therebetween. The service server 30 is used when the service provider provides services associated with the multifunction peripheral 10.
Referring back to
When the multifunction peripheral 10 has a failure, the failure-report processing unit 11 executes a process for reporting the failure to the service server 30 in accordance with an instruction from the user. The failure-report processing unit 11 has a failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111, a user interface (UI) controller 112, a reproduction data generation unit 113, and a transmission processing unit 114. The failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 receives, as failure occurrence information, information identifying a failure designated by the user. The failure occurrence information includes location information indicating the occurrence location of a failure occurring on the printed material generated by printing based on print data and substance information indicating the substance of the failure. The print data is data designated in the print job and referred to when the printer 127 performs printing. In the description of this exemplary embodiment, a case where the print data is described in a print description language (PDL) is taken as an example. It goes without saying that the print data is not limited to the description in the PDL.
The UI controller 112 performs control of communication between the user and the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 performed using the operation panel 125 when the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 acquires the failure occurrence information. The reproduction data generation unit 113 extracts a part to be used to reproduce the failure from the print data with reference to the failure occurrence information received by the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 and generates, as failure reproduction information, data for reproduction (referred to as reproduction data) including the extracted part. The transmission processing unit 114 transmits the reproduction data generated by the reproduction data generation unit 113 to the service server 30.
The information management unit 12 manages information handled by the multifunction peripheral 10. For example, the information management unit 12 manages jobs held in the job management DB 13 and failure support information transmitted from the service server 30.
The components 11 and 12 of the multifunction peripheral 10 are implemented by cooperation operation between a computer installed in the multifunction peripheral 10 and a program run by the CPU 121 installed in the computer. The job management DB 13 is implemented by the HDD 124 installed in the multifunction peripheral 10. Alternatively, the RAM 123 or an external memory may be used via the network.
The service server 30 is a major information processing apparatus that operates when the service system 3 provides the customer with a service. The service server 30 in this exemplary embodiment may be implemented by a hardware configuration of an existing general-purpose server computer. The service server 30 thus has a CPU, a ROM, a RAM, a HDD serving as a memory, and a network interface provided as a communication medium. This exemplary embodiment is described on the assumption that the service server 30 is implemented by one information processing apparatus; however, the service server 30 may be implemented in such a manner that the components illustrated in
As illustrated in
The information collection unit 31 collects information transmitted from the multifunction peripheral 10 as part of the provided service. The information collection unit 31 also receives reproduction data transmitted in accordance with the user operation when the multifunction peripheral 10 has a failure.
The information management unit 32 manages customer information received by the information collection unit 31 and the failure information including reproduction data. The failure analysis unit 33 analyzes the failure that has occurred in the multifunction peripheral 10, for example, by reproducing the failure on the basis of the reproduction data. The failure-support information generation unit 34 generates information regarding the failure as the failure support information with reference to the customer information and the failure information and accumulates the generated information in the failure-support information DB 38. The information providing unit 35 provides the customer with the failure support information as part of the services.
The components 31 to 35 in the service server 30 are implemented by cooperation operation between the computer configured as the service server 30 and a program run by a CPU installed in the computer. The DBs 36 to 38 are implemented by the HDD installed in the service server 30. Alternatively, the RAM or an external memory may be used via the network.
The programs used in this exemplary embodiment may be provided not only by a communication medium but also in such a manner as to be stored in a computer readable recording medium such as a CD-ROM or a USB memory. The programs provided from the communication medium or the recording medium are installed in the computer, and the CPU of the computer serially runs the programs. Various processes are thereby implemented.
Operations in this exemplary embodiment will then be described. The multifunction peripheral 10 has various functions; however, description for this exemplary embodiment is focused on the printing function of the multifunction peripheral 10.
According to a contract with a customer, the service system 3 of the service provider in this exemplary embodiment holds information regarding the multifunction peripheral 10 of the customer, such as a model and optional devices of the multifunction peripheral 10 installed in the site of the customer. The information collection unit 31 in the service server 30 has a function of collecting pieces of information regarding operating state and consumables based on a meter or the like indicating the consumption of consumables such as printing sheets and ink. The information collection unit 31 further has a function of collecting information to be stored in the multifunction peripheral 10, such as information regarding the user terminal 101 used for a printing instruction to the multifunction peripheral 10 and printing tendency, and collects and accumulates the pieces of customer information regarding the customer in a customer information DB 36. Examples of the information regarding the user terminal 101 include the OS of the user terminal 101, patch information, information regarding a printing application used for the printing, and job information. The information collection unit 31 collects these pieces of information regardless of whether a failure occurs. The information collection unit 31 further accumulates information regarding a failure occurring in the multifunction peripheral 10 in the failure information DB 37, separately from the customer information. The customer information and the failure information are related to each other with the identification of the customer or the like.
The failure-support information generation unit 34 generates the failure support information, for example, in such a manner as to analyze on which model the failure has occurred, what the failure is, and when the failure has occurred and to group similar failures. The failure-support information generation unit 34 creates a failure-support information DB by registering the generated failure support information in the failure-support information DB. The failure-support information generation unit 34 also updates the generated failure support information with a failure that has newly occurred, as occasion demands. As described above, the information collection unit 31 collects the failure information in response to the occurrence of a failure in the site of a customer, while the information providing unit 35 provides a customer, as occasion demands, with the failure support information in response to the occurrence of a failure associated with the customer or a failure similar to the failure, the failure being managed with the failure support information. The service provider provides the customer with a service related to consumables replenishment, measures against failures, and the like with reference to the information accumulated in the DBs 36 to 38 held and managed as described above.
Suppose a case where a failure occurs when the user performs printing with the multifunction peripheral 10. In this case, the multifunction peripheral 10 automatically transmits failure information to the service server 30. Apart from the automatic transmission, the customer contacts the service provider to request the service provider to work out a solution to the failure in accordance with an instruction from the customer. Note that the output of a printing result (that is, a printed material) not intended by the customer is regarded as a failure. Whether a failure occurs may be determined in such a manner that the user verifies, for example, the printing state of a printed material such as corrupted text output by printing execution of print data by the multifunction peripheral 10.
The service provider takes a countermeasure for a solution to the failure in response to the contact by the customer. To solve the failure early, the cause of the failure occurrence is typically analyzed. To achieve this, it is effective and efficient to reproduce the failure that has occurred. Accordingly, if possible, it is appropriate to obtain print data used for the actual printing execution at the time of the failure occurrence (hereinafter, also referred to failure data) and to reproduce the failure by executing the printing of the obtained failure data.
However, quite a few customers refuse to provide the failure data as it is because of the confidential information inclusion or the like in the failure data. Hence, this exemplary embodiment is configured to enable extraction of minimum information required for the failure analysis from the failure data. In addition, to more effectively and efficiently extract the minimum required information, the user is caused to designate a part where the failure occurs.
As described above, if the multifunction peripheral 10 has a failure, the customer reports the occurrence of the failure to the service provider for failure resolution or the like. In this exemplary embodiment, the multifunction peripheral 10 reports the failure in accordance with an instruction from the user through user operation. Hereinafter, a failure report process executed by the multifunction peripheral 10 in this exemplary embodiment will be described by using a flowchart illustrated in
If the user who causes a print job to be executed looks at a printed material serving as the printing result, admits that a failure has occurred thereon, and reports the failure to the service provider, the user performs a predetermined operation with the operation panel 125 to display a completed job list.
The user selects the print job, and failure data is thereby identified. In this exemplary embodiment, the user may designate the substance of a failure in the failure data and the location of the failure. Any one of the occurrence location of the failure and the substance of the failure may be designated first; however, in this exemplary embodiment, the occurrence location of the failure is designated first.
In this exemplary embodiment, the user is caused to designate the occurrence location of the failure on the printed material.
For example, the user scans a printed material having a failure, and the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 thereby reads the printed material. The failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 subsequently displays the read image of the printed material on the operation panel 125 in such a manner that the grid image illustrated in
In this exemplary embodiment, a group range of cells designated by the user and one or more cells neighboring thereto, if any, is handled as a failure area. The group range is also referred to as a failure part on occasions.
On the initial screen of the Set Reproduction Data screen, a failure-location designation area 43a for a failure area is displayed. The user refers to the image in which the grid image is superimposed on the read image illustrated in
To designate the multiple failure areas 52, the user selects an Add one row button 44. In response to the button selection operation, the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 adds and displays a failure-location designation area 43b for a failure area. The user sets “G-13” as the position of the upper left cell of the failure-location designation area 43b and sets “H-13” as the position of the lower right cell. When not being required to be discriminated from each other, the failure-location designation areas 43a and 43b are each collectively referred to as a failure-location designation area 43.
A Delete one row button 45 for deleting the added failure-location designation area 43 is provided on the Set Reproduction Data screen. In this exemplary embodiment, “Per failure part” and “Set dummy data” on the Set Reproduction Data screen are described later.
In response to the user selecting a Next button 46 after selecting the failure area 52 as described above, the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 acquires, as location information, information indicating the failure occurrence location designated by inputting each failure-location designation area 43 (step S200). In this exemplary embodiment, for convenience of explanation, the failure area 52 is handled as a rectangle. However, the handling of a rectangle leads to a case where as in the failure area 52a, the cell “E8” not having a failure is included in the failure area 52. To avoid this, the user interface of the failure-location designation area 43 may be designed to designate the location of only one or more cells having a failure. To cancel the designation of the failure area 52, the user selects a Back button 47.
In the description above, the user designates the occurrence location of the failure by inputting the occurrence location in the failure-location designation area 43; however, the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 may automatically set the failure area 52 for the failure-location designation area 43, for example, in response to the user selecting a cell on the image illustrated in
In the description above, the user scans the printed material. However, scan data of the printed material is temporarily generated. Even if the scan data is generated temporarily, there is a possibility that a user wishes to avoid this. In this case, for example, the grid image illustrated in
After selecting the Next button 46 and acquiring the location information successfully, the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 displays the Set Reproduction Data screen illustrated in
The failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 causes the user to check at least one of checkboxes 62 to 65 for failure on the Set Reproduction Data screen serving as a predetermined failure substance setting screen to thereby designate the substance of the failure. This exemplary embodiment is designed to avoid providing failure data as it is without processing because, for example, the failure data is confidential; however, a checkbox 61 is also provided for a customer who may transmit failure data as it is.
As described above, in response to the user selecting a Transmit button 66 after designating the substance of the failure, the failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 acquires, as substance information, information indicating the substance of the failure (step S200). To cancel the designation of the substance of the failure, the user selects a Back button 67.
The failure-occurrence information acquisition unit 111 acquires the failure occurrence information including the location information indicating the occurrence location of the failure and the substance information indicating the substance of the failure in the aforementioned manner.
The reproduction data generation unit 113 subsequently generates reproduction data with reference to the failure occurrence information (step S300). A reproduction data generation process by the reproduction data generation unit 113 will be described by using a flowchart illustrated in
First, if the customer checks the checkbox 61 and thereby selects transmitting the failure data as it is without processing (Y in step S301), the reproduction data generation unit 113 sets the failure data for reproduction data generation (step S312). If the customer does not select transmitting the failure data as it is (N in step S301), the reproduction data generation unit 113 subsequently refers to the failure occurrence information and thereby verifies whether the failure data includes multiple failure parts. The case where failure data includes multiple failure parts is a case where there are the multiple failure areas 52a and 52b as illustrated in
If the user wishes to generate corresponding reproduction data per failure part, the user is only required to check a checkbox 48 for Per failure part on the Set Reproduction Data screen illustrated in in
If there is only one failure part in the failure data (N in step S302), or if the user does not wish to process the failure parts separately (N in step S303) even though there are multiple failure parts (Y in step S302), the reproduction data generation unit 113 generates one piece of reproduction data for the failure data.
The reproduction data generation unit 113 subsequently refers to the failure occurrence information and thereby identifies an unprocessed failure part (step S306) and acquires the substance of the failure corresponding to the identified failure part. If the acquired substance of the failure, that is, the failure that has occurred in the failure part and that is to be processed is a failure involved with an image (IMAGE in step S306), the reproduction data generation unit 113 removes information except the image in the corresponding failure area 52, that is, text (step S307). In contrast, if the failure that has occurred in the failure part and that is to be processed is a failure involved with text (TEXT in step S306), the reproduction data generation unit 113 removes information except the text in the corresponding failure area 52, that is, an image (step S308). A process for editing the data corresponding to the failure part of the failure data on the basis of the substance of the failure will be described specifically by using
If the substance of the failure in the failure area 52 is involved with text, the reproduction data generation unit 113 deletes, among the descriptions in the original data, a description except data regarding the text in the failure area 52 (that is, a description regarding the printing of the text).
The reproduction data generation unit 113 edits the descriptions for printing the failure part in the above described manner. In contrast, in the processing above, the reproduction data generation unit 113 does not process a printing part corresponding to a part other than the failure part in the printed material. Hence, the reproduction data generation unit 113 forms data corresponding to the area except the failure area (step S309).
It is considered that the print data corresponding to the area except the failure part (hereinafter, also referred to as a normal area) is processed in the following manner. For example, the print data corresponding to the normal area is left without any processing. In this case, since it is possible to verify the printing state of the normal area, comparison with the failure area is performed easily, and thus the substance of the failure is identified easily. However, in consideration for a customer who does not wish to provide the service provider with the content of the printing of the normal area, the data for the normal area in the printing may be replaced with dummy data such as a blank or a predetermined pattern. In this exemplary embodiment, the data is replaced with the dummy data.
Incidentally, if the user wishes to set the dummy data for the normal area, the user is only required to check a checkbox 49 for Set dummy data on the Set Reproduction Data screen illustrated in in
After the end of settings of both of the data including only the part to be used to reproduce the failure in the failure area on the printed material and the dummy data for the normal area in the above described manner, the reproduction data generation unit 113 puts the settings together and generates reproduction data (step S310). The reproduction data generation unit 113 repeats the steps described above (steps S305 to 310) on one or more unprocessed failure parts (Y in step S311). After reproduction data corresponding to all of the failure parts is generated (N in step S311), the processing is terminated.
Referring back to
In the service server 30, in response to receiving the reproduction data, the information collection unit 31 transmits the reproduction data to a person in charge and thereby reports the occurrence of the failure. The person in charge operates the failure analysis unit 33 and analyzes the failure. Alternatively, the person in charge may handle the failure in such a manner as to reproduce the failure after taking the reproduction data to the site of the customer.
In this exemplary embodiment, the reproduction data is generated in such a manner that only data attributed to the occurrence of the failure is extracted from the failure area of the failure data. Accordingly, the customer may provide data involved with the failure in a state where information not intended to provide the service provider, such as confidential information, is removed from the failure data.
In the embodiments above, the term “processor” refers to hardware in a broad sense. Examples of the processor include general processors (e.g., CPU: Central Processing Unit) and dedicated processors (e.g., GPU: Graphics Processing Unit, ASIC: Application Specific Integrated Circuit, FPGA: Field Programmable Gate Array, and programmable logic device).
In the embodiments above, the term “processor” is broad enough to encompass one processor or plural processors in collaboration which are located physically apart from each other but may work cooperatively. The order of operations of the processor is not limited to one described in the embodiments above, and may be changed.
The foregoing description of the exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure has been provided for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the disclosure to the precise forms disclosed. Obviously, many modifications and variations will be apparent to practitioners skilled in the art. The embodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the disclosure and its practical applications, thereby enabling others skilled in the art to understand the disclosure for various embodiments and with the various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the disclosure be defined by the following claims and their equivalents.
(((1)))
An image processing system includes:
In the image processing system according to (((1))),
In the image processing system according to (((2))),
In the image processing system according to (((2))),
In the image processing system according to any one of (((1))) to (((4))),
In the image processing system according to (((5))),
In the image processing system according to (((5))),
A program causes a computer to execute a process including:
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-051804 | Mar 2023 | JP | national |
