Personalized diagnostics, troubleshooting, recovery, and notification based on application state

• US 10,241,848 B2
• Filed: 09/30/2016
• Issued: 03/26/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Patil, Nagaraj, Nallabothula, Kiran, Nica, Doru, Misra, Himanshu, Wu, Minjun, Bhuthpur, Raghavendra, Rangam, Sathish Kumar Venkat, Busam, Srihari, Palla, Nagaraju, Zhuang, Ning, Yang, Ming, Li, Xiaoyu, Fong, Eddie, Chen, Katy
• Primary Examiner(s): Manoskey, Joseph D
• Application Number:
  US15/283,276
• Publication Number:
  US 20180095814A1
• Time in Patent Office: 907 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0745 in an input/output transactions management context input/output processing in general G06F13/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0751 Error or fault detection not based on redundancy power supply failures G06F1/30; network fault management H04L41/06
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0769 Readable error formats, e.g. cross-platform generic formats, human understandable formats
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40

Abstract

Personalized diagnostics, troubleshooting, recovery, and notification based on application state is provided. In some examples, system, application, and device level configuration and usage data may be collected as telemetry data. Upon detection of a crash or similar problem, or upon user activation, an assistance service and/or a local assistance application component may execute diagnostics on the crashed application based on the telemetry data, user credentials, known problems, and other factors which may be recorded by the assistance application and/or other system elements. Suitable recovery actions may be taken. If recovery actions are unsuccessful, diagnostic information may be provided to a support system and the issue elevated. Moreover, collected information may be provided to a system database for generating data insights and determining error patterns.

Claims

1. A method to provide personalized diagnostics, troubleshooting, recovery, and notification based on an application state via a productivity service providing an assistance service, the method comprising:

determining an encountered error associated with an application;

retrieving information associated with one or more of telemetry data, user credential data, system configuration data, device configuration data, and application state data;

analyzing the encountered error in view of the retrieved information and an encountered error database in order to identify a resolution for the encountered error; and

in response to identifying a resolution for the encountered error, initiating a recovery action for the identified resolution and updating the encountered error database based on an analysis of the encountered error, the identified resolution, the retrieved information, a determined level of success for the identified resolution, and a number of iterations required to resolve the encountered error, and

providing information associated with the encountered error, analysis results, and the identified resolution to a data insights database.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising initiating a ticket workflow, wherein the ticket workflow is managed by a ticket manager component of the assistance service, and the ticket manager component is configured to persist and update a service configuration.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

receiving updated configuration information and health information from the productivity service for a user associated with the encountered error.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

providing the telemetry data to an analysis engine of the assistance service from the ticket manager, wherein the telemetry data includes one or more of local resource usage, remote resource usage, and network connectivity.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the application state data includes state data of one or more components of the productivity service and state data of one or more other applications executed on a computing device of a user.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

receiving the state data of the one or more other applications executed on the computing device of the user through predefined application programming interfaces (APIs) of the one or more other applications.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving one or more of identified encountered errors, corresponding resolutions, and error patterns from the encountered error database.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein initiating the recovery action for the identified resolution comprises:

prompting a user to take one or more actions.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising, in response to failing to identify the resolution for the encountered error, escalating the encountered error to a support department, wherein escalating the encountered error to the support department comprises:

providing background information associated with the analysis to the support department; and

enabling the support department to contact a user by prompting the user to provide a contact preference.

10. A computing device to provide personalized diagnostics, troubleshooting, recovery, and notification based on an application state, the computing device comprising:

a communication interface configured to facilitate communication between the computing device and one or more servers;

a memory configured to store instructions; and

one or more processors coupled to the memory, wherein the one or more processors, in conjunction with the instructions stored in the memory, are configured to execute a productivity service, the productivity service comprising;

one or more productivity applications and an assistance application, wherein the assistance application is configured to;

determine an encountered error associated with one of the one or more productivity applications;

retrieve information associated with one or more of telemetry data, user credential data, system configuration data, device configuration data, and application state data;

analyze the encountered error in view of the retrieved information and an encountered error database in order to identify a plurality of potential resolutions for the encountered error;

in response to identifying the plurality of potential resolutions for the encountered error, iteratively perform a plurality of corresponding recovery actions for the identified plurality of potential resolutions, update the encountered error database based on an analysis of the encountered error, the identified plurality of potential resolutions, the retrieved information, a determined level of success for the identified plurality of potential resolutions, and a number of iterations required to resolve the encountered error; and

provide information associated with the encountered error, analysis results, and the identified plurality of resolutions to a data insights database.

11. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the assistance application is further configured to:

retrieve at least a portion of the information associated with one or more of the telemetry data, the user credential data, the system configuration data, the device configuration data, and the application state data prior to determining the encountered error.

12. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the assistance application includes a ticket manager component configured to execute in a background, manage a ticket workflow initiated for the encountered error, and receive updated configuration information and health information from the productivity service.

13. The computing device of claim 12, wherein the ticket manager component is, further configured to:

register one or more notifications for a user interface of the assistance application and one or more listener modules to update progress on current productivity service issues.

14. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the assistance application is executed on one of a plurality of servers configured to execute components of the productivity service and accessed through a client application executed on a client device.

15. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the productivity service includes one or more of a word processing application, a spreadsheet application, a presentation application, a note taking application, a communication application, and a calendar application.

16. A system for providing personalized diagnostics, troubleshooting, recovery, and notification based on an application state, the system comprising:

a first server executing a productivity service; and

a second server communicatively coupled to the first server and executing an assistance service, the assistance service configured to;

determine an encountered error associated with an application associated with the productivity service;

receive information associated with one or more of telemetry data, user credential data, system configuration data, device configuration data, and application state data; and

analyze the encountered error in view of the received information and an encountered error database in order to identify a plurality of potential resolutions for the encountered error;

in response to identifying the plurality of potential resolutions for the encountered error, iteratively perform a plurality of corresponding recovery actions for the identified plurality of potential resolutions, updating the encountered error database based on an analysis of the encountered error, the identified plurality of potential resolutions, the retrieved information, a determined level of success for the identified plurality of potential resolutions, and a number of iterations required to resolve the encountered error, and

provide information associated with the encountered error, analysis results, and the identified resolution to a data insights database.

17. The system of claim 16, the assistance service comprising:

a workflow manager configured to manage local and remote analysis workflows; and

a file uploader configured to upload the information associated with the encountered error, the analysis results, and the identified resolution to the assistance service.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the assistance service is further configured to receive reports on results of the recovery actions.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the reports are repeated based on a recurrence interval for the duration of the issue.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the assistance service is one of an independent service and part of the productivity service.