State-based remedial action generation

• US 10,585,788 B2
• Filed: 02/21/2017
• Issued: 03/10/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 02/21/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Nallabothula, Kiran, Symington, Dylan, Zhuang, Ning, Busam, Srihari, Misra, Himanshu, Venkat Rangam, Sathish Kumar, Solkar, Shakeel, Dargie, Kevin M., Nica, Doru Constantin, Wu, Minjun, Moody, Scott A., Borodina, Svetlana A., Yin, Yuedong
• Primary Examiner(s): Bryan, Jason B
• Application Number:
  US15/437,700
• Publication Number:
  US 20180239694A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,113 Days
• Field of Search: 714 26
• 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 11/0721 within a central processing unit [CPU]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0742 in a data processing system embedded in a mobile device, e.g. mobile phones, handheld devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0748 in a remote unit communicating with a single-box computer node experiencing an error/fault remote testing G06F11/2294
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0778 Dumping, i.e. gathering error/state information after a fault for later diagnosis
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2294 by remote test
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3688 for test execution, e.g. scheduling of test suites

Abstract

A client computing system detects when a problem is encountered with an application and identified problem-specific diagnostic data that is to be collected, given the detected problem. It also identifies one or more problem-specific test or diagnostic analyzers and executes those analyzers to generate additional data. The data that is collected and the data that is generated by the analyzers is packaged and sent to a service computing system for identifying a remedial action that can be performed to address the problem. The remedial action is received and surfaced for the user.

Claims

1. A client computing system, comprising:

a communication system configured to communicate with a remote service in a remote server environment over a communication network;

at least one processor; and

memory storing instructions executable by the at least one processor, wherein the instructions, when executed, provide on the client computing system;

application running logic that runs an application on the client computing system;

problem detection logic configured to;

detect a problem with the application, running on the client computing system, that degrades operation of the application, and

generate a problem identifier indicative of the problem;

a state-based diagnostic engine configured to;

access problem-to-analyzer mappings that map problem identifiers to a plurality of problem-specific diagnostic analyzers that are stored locally on the client computing system,

each problem-specific diagnostic analyzer being configured to, when executed locally on the client computing system, generate diagnostic data specific to a different problem in the application;

select one of the problem-specific diagnostic analyzers based on a correlation between the generated problem identifier and the problem-to-analyzer mappings;

execute the selected problem-specific diagnostic analyzer locally on the client computing system, wherein the executed problem-specific diagnostic analyzer accesses live application data generated by the running application and generates diagnostic data based on the live application data;

generate a diagnostic data package, with the diagnostic data; and

transmit, by the communication system over the communication network, the generated diagnostic data package to the remote service; and

recovery action logic configured to;

receive a recovery action identifier, from the remote service in response to the transmitted diagnostic data package, indicative of a recovery action corresponding to the problem.

2. The client computing system of claim 1 wherein the state-based diagnostic engine comprises:

problem-specific data collection logic configured to access one or more data stores and collect problem-specific data from the one or more data stores based on the problem identifier.

3. The client computing system of claim 2 wherein the problem detection logic comprises:

code checkpoint logic configured to detect when the problem is automatically detected by code running in the application; and

a user input detector configured to detect when the problem is detected based on a problem reporting user input.

4. The client computing system of claim 3 wherein the problem detection logic comprises:

problem estimator logic configured to generate a problem scenario identifier indicative of an estimated problem scenario based on the detected problem.

5. The client computing system of claim 4 wherein the data packaging logic comprises:

personally identifiable information (PII) redaction logic configured to remove or redact PII from the diagnostic data; and

payload generation logic configured to generate the diagnostic data package including the problem scenario identifier, the diagnostic data generated by the problem-specific diagnostic analyzer, and the problem-specific data collected from the one or more data stores based on the problem identifier.

6. The client computing system of claim 1, wherein the instructions provide:

recovery action surfacing logic configured to, and to surface the recovery action for user interaction.

7. The client computing system of claim 6 wherein the recovery action surfacing logic is further configured to automatically generate control signals to perform at least a portion of the recovery action automatically in response to receiving the recovery action from the remote service.

8. The client computing system of claim 6 wherein the recovery action surfacing logic is further configured to transmit a representation of the recovery action to an administrative user for administrative user interaction and to surface a notification to the user that the administrative user has been notified.

9. The client computing system of claim 1, wherein the problem detection logic is configured generate a problem scenario identifier indicative of an estimated problem scenario by applying a classifier to detected problem.

10. A method performed by a client computing system, the method comprising:

running an application on the client computing system;

detecting a problem with the application, running on the client computing system, that degrades operation of the application;

generating, based on detecting the problem, a problem identifier that identifies the detected problem;

accessing a set of problem-to-analyzer mappings that map problem identifiers to a plurality of problem-specific diagnostic analyzers that are stored locally on the client computing system,

each problem-specific diagnostic analyzer being configured to execute locally on the client computing system to generate diagnostic data specific to a different problem in the application;

selecting one of the problem-specific diagnostic analyzers based on a correlation between the generated problem identifier and the problem-to-analyzer mappings;

running the selected problem-specific diagnostic analyzer, locally on the client computing system, wherein the executed problem-specific diagnostic analyzer accesses live application data generated by the running application and generates diagnostic data based on the live application data; and

generating a diagnostic data package, with the diagnostic data;

transmitting, by a communication system over a communication network, the generated diagnostic data package to a remote service in a remote server environment; and

receiving a recovery action identifier, from the remote service in response to the transmitted diagnostic data package, indicative of a recovery action corresponding to the problem.

11. The method of claim 10 and further comprising:

access one or more data stores local to the computing system; and

collecting problem-specific data from the one or more data stores based on the problem identifier.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein detecting a problem comprises:

automatically detecting the problem with code running in the application; and

detecting the problem based on a problem reporting user input.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein detecting the problem comprises:

generating a problem scenario identifier indicative of an estimated problem scenario based on the detected problem.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein generating a diagnostic data package comprises:

removing or redacting personally identifiable information (PII) from the diagnostic data; and

generating the diagnostic data package including the problem scenario identifier, the diagnostic data generated by the problem-specific diagnostic analyzer, and the problem-specific data collected from the one or more data stores based on the problem identifier.

15. The method of claim 10 and further comprising:

surfacing the recovery action for user interaction.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein surfacing the recovery action comprises:

automatically generating control signals to perform at least a portion of the recovery action automatically in response to receiving the recovery action from the remote service.

17. The method of claim 15 wherein surfacing the recovery action comprises:

transmitting a representation of the recovery action to an administrative user for administrative user interaction; and

surfacing a notification to the user that the administrative user has been notified.

18. A client computing system, comprising:

a communication system configured to communicate with a remote service in a remote server environment over a communication network;

at least one processor; and

memory storing instructions executable by the at least one processor, wherein the instructions, when executed, cause the client computing system to;

run an application on the client computing system;

automatically detect, by code running in the application, a problem with the application, that degrades operation of the application;

generate a problem scenario identifier indicative of an estimated problem scenario by applying a classifier to detected problem;

access problem-to-analyzer mappings that map problem identifiers to a plurality of problem-specific diagnostic analyzers that are stored locally on the client computing system,

each problem-specific diagnostic analyzer being configured to, when executed locally on the client computing device, generate diagnostic data specific to a different problem in the application;

select one of the problem-specific diagnostic analyzers based on a correlation between the generated problem identifier and the problem-to-analyzer mappings;

execute the selected problem-specific diagnostic analyzer, locally on the client computing system, wherein the executed problem-specific diagnostic analyzer accesses live application data generated by the running application and generates diagnostic data based on the live application data;

generate a diagnostic data package, with the diagnostic data;

transmit, by the communication system over the communication network, the diagnostic data package to the remote service;

receive a recovery action identifier, from the remote service in the remote server environment, indicative of a recovery action corresponding to the problem; and

surface the recovery action for user interaction.

19. The client computing system of claim 18 wherein the instructions cause the client computing system to:

remove or redact personally identifiable information (PII) from the diagnostic data; and

generate the diagnostic data package including the problem scenario identifier.