Informing troubleshooting sessions with device data

• US 20080294423A1
• Filed: 05/23/2007
• Published: 11/27/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/23/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NEC Electronics Corporation (Renesas Electronics Corporation), Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Castellani, Stefania, Rockwell, Ronald M., Roulland, Frederic, Grasso, Antonietta, Thieret, Tracy E., Kaplan, Aaron N., Roux, Claude, Kramer, Roger, Gusmano, Donald J.
• Granted Patent: US 7,890,318 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/4
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0733 in a data processing system embedded in an image processing device, e.g. printer, facsimile, scanner
• 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 16/3329 Natural language query formulation or dialogue systems

Abstract

A method for troubleshooting a problem with a device includes acquiring device data for the device, receiving a user'"'"'s query concerning a device in a natural language, presenting possible refinements to at least a portion of the user'"'"'s query for defining a problem statement, presenting candidate solutions that are associated with the defined problem statement in a knowledge base, at least one of the presentation of possible refinements and the presentation of candidate solutions being informed by device data that is linked through a diagnostic model of the device to at least one of the problem statements and candidate solutions.

Claims

1. A method for troubleshooting a problem with a device, comprising:

acquiring device data for the device;

receiving a user'"'"'s query concerning a device in a natural language;

presenting possible refinements to at least a portion of the user'"'"'s query for defining a problem statement;

presenting candidate solutions that are associated with the defined problem statement in a knowledge base, at least one of the presentation of possible refinements and the presentation of candidate solutions being informed by device data that is linked through a diagnostic model of the device to at least one of the problem statements and candidate solutions.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the acquiring of device data for the device includes acquiring the device data from at least one of the device and a diagnostic engine in communication with the device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the acquiring of device data for the device includes acquiring at least one of:

device configuration data;

device diagnostic data;

device history data; and

device current status data.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the device configuration data is used to modify the ranking of at least one of the presented refinements and solutions linked to the device configuration data by the diagnostic model where the configuration data identifies a component which is not in use.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the device diagnostic data is used to modify the ranking of at least one of the presented refinements and solutions that is linked to the device diagnostic data by the diagnostic model where the diagnostic device data identifies a potential problem with the device.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the device diagnostic data comprises one of the group consisting of:

a. a complete diagnosis, which is used to increase the success likelihood of a problem statement or solution to which it relates;

b. a partial diagnosis, which is used to increase the success likelihood of all the problem statements classified under a concept to which it relates; and

c. a degree of confidence, which is used to weight the level of success likelihood of a related problem statement or solution.

7. The method of claim 3, wherein the device diagnostic data is used to identify solutions which are consistent with the device data.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein the device history data is used to identify solutions which have been previously at least partially attempted on the device.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the receiving of the user'"'"'s query concerning a device in a natural language includes receiving a query input on a graphical user interface.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the presenting of possible refinements to at least a portion of the user'"'"'s query includes presenting query refinements in the form of a navigation tree.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein a ranking of the refinements is based at least in part on the device data.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising, identifying query refinements that are compatible with the device data.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the identifying includes providing visual indicators for the presented solutions which are compatible with the device data.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining a likelihood of success of a candidate solution based on the device data.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein the presentation of refinements of the user'"'"'s query further comprise presenting subparts of the user'"'"'s query as alternate queries.

16. The system of claim 1, wherein the refinements to the user'"'"'s query are presented as syntactic units selected from the group consisting of noun phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbial phrases, adjectival phrases, verbal syntactic units, and combinations thereof.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

defining the model of the device as a hierarchical structure in which a plurality of nodes of the structure each represent a concept related to the device or to a class of devices to which the device belongs; and

linking each of a plurality of the problem statements in the knowledge base to a selected one or more of the concepts.

18. A computer program product encoding instructions, which when executed on a computer causes the computer to perform the method of claim 1.

19. A system for troubleshooting a problem with a device, comprising:

a device data acquisition module which acquires device data for the device;

a text searching module which receives a user'"'"'s query concerning a device in a natural language, generates possible refinements to at least a portion of the user'"'"'s query for defining a problem statement, and retrieves candidate solutions that are associated with the defined problem statement in an associated knowledge base; and

an integration module which integrates device data which is linked in a model of the device with at least one of the possible refinements and candidate solutions for informing the presentation of the possible refinements and presented candidate solutions.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising a graphical user interface for inputting a user inputs a query and displaying possible refinements and candidate solutions.

21. The system of claim 19, further comprising memory which stores acquired device data and the model of the device.

22. A graphical user interface configured for displaying a web browser in which a user submits a query relating to a problem with a device, the user interface being further configured for presenting possible refinements to at least a portion of the query for defining a problem statement relating to a problem with device and for presenting candidate solutions to the problem retrieved from an associated knowledge base, at least one of the presentation of possible refinements and presentation of candidate solutions being informed by device data for the device.

23. The user interface of claim 22, wherein the graphical user interface is configured for representing at least a group of problem statements as a navigation tree in which each of a plurality of selectable nodes comprises an expression representative of at least one syntactic unit in at least one of the identified problem statements and wherein relationships between syntactic units are used in structuring the nodes of the navigation tree, whereby in navigating the tree, a user selects nodes which refine the query.

24. A method for generating a model for informing results of a troubleshooting search with device data comprising:

defining an ontology of a device or class of devices to which the device belongs, the ontology having a tree structure in which nodes of the structure define concepts; and

linking cases in a knowledge base relating to defined problems with the device to selected ones of the nodes, enabling device data relating to a concept to be linked to cases in the knowledge base that are linked to that concept.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the linking includes applying natural language processing techniques to the cases to detect positive references to a node and distinguish them from neutral references.