The present invention has its application within the telecommunications sector and, especially, in the field of incidents management in communication services.
Telecommunication networks, and communication services provided over said networks, are usually expected to be permanently operative. This is the case, for example, of telephone services or internet access, services which are intended to function everyday, at any time.
However, different factors, such as faulty devices, erroneous configurations at any point of the communication network or the user equipment or user's lack of training, may result in the failure of the communication service or in worse performances than expected. For this reason, telecommunication operators usually provide support services that allow users to report incidents in their services, and which try to diagnose and solve said incidents whenever possible (understanding by incident diagnosis the determination of a source, or sources, of a problem perceived by the user).
Different technologies are known to provide support services to customers:
Among all these technologies, only solutions based on web sites and automatic platforms provide enough interactivity to result in automatic incident diagnosis (that is, without devoting human resources to the task). However, these solutions are based on processes that are only based on the information provided by the user and which follow predefined steps, thus resulting in low adaptability and efficiency.
There is thus the need in the state of the art of a way to provide an efficient and adaptable diagnosis to incidents reported by a user, without requiring human resources.
The current invention solves the aforementioned problems by disclosing a system and method that allows to automatically determine the cause of incidents in a communication service, and efficiently restoring said service if possible, by interacting with a user of the service, without the need of establishing a communication with an employee of the communication network's operator, and with an improved efficiency thanks to the use of historical data from the user and reasoning tools which do not follow predefined steps.
In a first aspect of the present invention, a system that provides technical support and diagnoses incidents is disclosed. Incidents are reported to the system by a user of a communication service, and may include any kind of failure or low performance of the network supporting the service or any of its components, as well as a user's perception of a problem when the network is operative. The system comprises:
Preferably, the reasoning means also consider information obtained by tests performed by testing means on the communication network, and are also adapted to determine the need to run said test. More preferably, said tests are also performed on a user or network device connected to the communication network.
Also preferably, to further widen the sources employed by the reasoning means, the system comprises a pattern analyzer which reviews historic data so as to detect specific user behaviours which can help in providing him or her with a better technical support.
Preferably, the communication means are also adapted to send configuration commands, which, by being run in the end user devices or in the network nodes providing his or her services, modifies a configuration of said services. This way, the system is not only able to diagnose the cause of an incident, but also to eliminate the problem when it can be solved by a simple reconfiguration.
In a second aspect of the present invention, a method for diagnosis of incidents in a communication service and for providing technical support regarding said service is disclosed. The method starts when a report of a incident is received from a user, and ends when diagnosis information about the incident is provided to the user. In the meantime, the following steps are performed repeatedly (although not necessarily in the following order, as the steps to perform are determined dynamically):
According to the data determined about the incident or concern about a given time (that is, all the relevant data known about the network, the service, its elements and behaviour, the user end devices, etc), it is dynamically determined if a diagnosis is obtained, and if not, which steps are to be performed to obtain more information (information requests to the user, database queries, tests and analyses). These decisions may be performed by using a predefined set of rules, or any other artificial intelligence procedure.
As the system and method of the invention dynamically determine which information is required to reach a diagnosis, and to obtain said information, they are not limited to questions to the users, a user is able to receive a diagnosis or solution in an efficient and adaptable manner without the need of a technician. These and other advantages will be apparent in the light of the detailed description of the invention.
For the purpose of aiding the understanding of the characteristics of the invention, according to a preferred practical embodiment thereof and in order to complement this description, the following figures are attached as an integral part thereof, having an illustrative and non-limiting character:
The matters defined in this detailed description are provided to assist in a comprehensive understanding of the invention. Accordingly, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that variations, changes and modifications of the embodiments described herein can be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
Note that in this text, the term “comprises” and its derivations (such as “comprising”, etc.) should not be understood in an excluding sense, that is, these terms should not be interpreted as excluding the possibility that what is described and defined may include further elements, steps, etc.
Together with the user terminal 3,
The core of the system 1 of diagnosis and technical support are reasoning means 7, which determine the operation of every other element of the system 1. These other elements are communication means 5, which establish the connections with the user; a database 6, which stores historic information about previous incidents reported by the user; testing means 8, pattern analyzer 9.
When an incident is reported by the user, the system guides him or her through an automatic diagnostic and support process that aims to determine the cause of the problem affecting his or her services. In a preferred embodiment, this diagnostic process is directed by the reasoning means 7 by means of a set of rules that are specified by a system administrator. Note that the reasoning means 7 may be implanted within the scope of the present invention with any other kind of artificial intelligence that uses the same sources of information (communications with the user, database, etc).
Rules express the knowledge of the system 1 about the problems that can be diagnosed. Rules can be static (they do not change over time), or they can be dynamically updated by automatically learning from previous iterations of the diagnostic process. An example of a rule structure is:
Fact 1, . . . Fact→Modification 1, . . . , Modification K
This structure means that in order for a rule to be applicable, all the facts in the head must be true. If this happens, the system performs all the indicated modifications to its internal state. At any time, the reasoning means 7 maintain an internal state made up of a number of facts that are valid at that time. Modifications may involve addition of new facts, removal of existing facts or modifications of existing facts. Facts are considered to be any data related to the incident which is not a definitive diagnosis, such as, for example, status information about the communication network 2, the user terminal 3, or the user behaviour.
To gain more information about the incident, from which facts can be determined, the system 1 interacts with the user through the communication means 5. This interaction is typically performed via a web interface but other interfaces are possible, such as voice-based interfaces. Through this interface, the communication means generate interaction units that convey information to the user (such as web pages if a web interface is being used), and that request and collect information from the user.
Another source of information are tests. Tests are automatically performed by the testing means 8 when issued by the reasoning means 7. Tests gather information by interacting with another automatic system, the user end devices 10, or the communication network 2.
The diagnostic process is always executing the following cycle:
As part of the artificial intelligence of the reasoning means, it is recommendable that when several possibilities for the incident arise, only one is analyzed at each time. For example, if the effect of modifying a configuration parameter is being analyzed, no further modifications should be performed until the effect of said configuration parameter is stated by the system.
In addition to the described interactions via interaction units and tests, two other sources of information are used by the system when commanded by the reasoning means 7:
In an exemplary embodiment of the invention, the reasoning means 7 are built around a DROOLS rule engine, which implements a version of the RETE algorithm, so as to make deductions based on the available facts. With every iteration, the reasoning means 7 read all the facts which are currently true, feed them into the rule engine and uses that information to select a set of interaction units to be rendered, tests to be run, historic information to be retrieved from the database, and patterns to be analyzed.
Before the next iteration of the cycle, all sets are executed. If there are no tests to be run but there are suitable interaction units to be rendered, all the candidate interaction units are fed into the rule engine again so that the best interaction unit is chosen. This is done by applying a special set of rules which is also configurable. The selected set of tests or the interaction unit is finally sent to the user terminal 3.
The communication means 5 manage the creation, sending and information retrieval of the interaction units. Three types of such units are defined:
In a preferred embodiment, once the incident is diagnosed, if the source of the problem can be repaired by the system, it sends configuration commands which perform the required configuration in the user end devices or in network equipments supporting the user's services.
The method and system of the invention are fully configurable, that is, by changing simple rule files or interaction unit definitions, additional scenarios can be devised. They are also accessible by web, so the system can be reached by auxiliar terminals and networks (e.g. if the customer's ADSL is not working, he or she can still reach the system by using his/her mobile phone).
Finally, the rule-based intelligence of the reasoning means, which results in a non-sequential and exhaustive search; and the plurality of information sources; allow to reach diagnostics in an efficient manner, and which is adaptable to any scenario and to any technology of the communication service.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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P201031250 | Aug 2010 | ES | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/EP2011/061574 | 7/8/2011 | WO | 00 | 3/13/2013 |