METHOD AND SYSTEM TO PROCESS ISSUE DATA PERTAINING TO A SYSTEM

• US 20090199054A1
• Filed: 03/31/2009
• Published: 08/06/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Embree, Kevin H., Silver, Ellen
• Granted Patent: US 8,407,317 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/57
• 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 11/0781 Error filtering or prioritizing based on a policy defined by the user or on a policy defined by a hardware/software module, e.g. according to a severity level
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/226 Validation
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/025 Extracting rules from data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/12 specially adapted for electronic shopping systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/016 After-sales
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0604 using filtering, e.g. reduction of information by using priority, element types, position or time
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0631 using root cause analysis; using analysis of correlation between notifications, alarms or events based on decision criteria, e.g. hierarchy, tree or time analysis
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0686 Additional information in the notification, e.g. enhancement of specific meta-data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/065 related to network devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/067 using time frame reporting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34

Abstract

A computer-implemented method to processes issue data in a system. A plurality of issue reports are received from respective reporting entities, each issue report being in respect of a system issue which requires a response activity. The issue reports are parsed to obtain priority criterion data relating to at least one priority criterion. The priority criterion is unrelated to the dates and/or times of the issue reports and may include visibility data, severity data, exposure data, and performance data relating to past performance of a reporting entity or a reported entity. The reported issues are then prioritized for order of response based at least partially on the associated criterion data.

Claims

1. A computer system comprising:

a prioritization engine to receive a plurality of issue reports from respective reporting entities, each issue report being indicative of a reported issue in the system which requires a corresponding response activity;

a priority criterion module to parse the plurality of issue reports, to obtain priority criterion data relating to at least one priority criterion which is unrelated to respective dates and/or times of the plurality of issue reports, the prioritization engine further being configured to;

automatically prioritize the reported issues by applying to each reported issue an issue priority based at least partially on the associated priority criterion data; and

communicate at least some of the reported issues to an agent to perform corresponding response activities, the response activities to be performed in order of their respective issue priorities.

2. The system of claim 1, in which the priority criterion data includes visibility data relating to the number of times a respective reported issue has been a subject of an issue report.

3. The system of claim 1, in which the priority criterion data includes severity data, the priority criterion module being configured to identify an issue type associated with a respective issue report, and to obtain the severity data based on the identified issue type.

4. The system of claim 1, in which the priority criterion data includes exposure data relating to a potential loss associated with a respective reported issue.

5. The system of claim 1, in which the priority criterion data includes performance data indicative of a past performance of a reporting entity associated with a respective issue report, the priority criterion module being configured to identify the reporting entity and to retrieve the performance data from a database.

6. The system of claim 1, in which the priority criterion data includes performance data indicative of a past performance of a reported entity associated with a respective issue report, the priority criteria module being configured to identify the reported entity, and to retrieve the performance data from a database.

7. The system of claim 1, in which the priority criterion module is configured to parse the plurality of issue reports to obtaining priority criteria data relating to a plurality of priority criteria which are unrelated to the date and/or time of the respective issue reports, the prioritization engine being configured to automatically prioritize the reported issues by applying to each reported issue a merged issue priority based at least partially on a combination of the associated priority criteria data.

8. The system of claim 1, in which the prioritization engine is configured to prioritize the reported issues by applying to each reported issue a merged issue priority based at least partially on a combination of at least two of:

visibility data relating to the number of times the relevant reported issue has been a subject of an issue report;

severity data relating to a pre-defined severity of an associated issue type;

exposure data relating to a potential loss associated with the relevant reported issue;

performance data indicative of a past performance of a reporting entity; and

performance data indicative of a past performance of a reported entity.

9. A computer-implemented method to process issue data in a system, the method comprising:

receiving a plurality of issue reports from respective reporting entities, each issue report being indicative of a reported issue in the system which requires a corresponding response activity;

using a processor, parsing the plurality of issue reports, to obtain priority criterion data relating to at least one priority criterion which is unrelated to dates and/or times of the plurality of issue reports;

using a processor, automatically prioritizing the reported issues by applying to each reported issue an issue priority based at least partially on the associated priority criterion data; and

communicating at least some of the reported issues to an agent to perform corresponding response activities, the response activities to be performed in order of their issue priorities.

10. The method of claim 9, in which the priority criterion data includes visibility data relating to the number of times a respective reported issue has been a subject of an issue report.

11. The method of claim 9, in which the priority criterion data includes severity data, the parsing including identifying an issue type associated with a respective issue report to obtain the severity data based on the identified issue type.

12. The method of claim 9, in which the priority criterion data includes exposure data relating to a potential loss associated with a respective reported issue.

13. The method of claim 9, in which the priority criterion data includes performance data indicative of a past performance of a reporting entity associated with a respective issue report, the parsing of the at least one issue report including identification of the reporting entity and retrieval of the performance data from a database.

14. The method of claim 9, in which the priority criterion data includes performance data indicative of a past performance of a reported entity associated with a respective issue report, parsing of the at least one issue report including identification of the reported entity and retrieval of the performance data from a database.

15. The method of claim 9, in which parsing of the at least one issue report includes obtaining priority criteria data relating to a plurality of priority criteria which are unrelated to the date and/or time of the issue report, the automatic prioritizing comprising the operation of applying to each reported issue a merged issue priority based at least partially on a combination of the associated priority criteria data.

16. The method of claim 9, in which the operation of automatically prioritizing the reported issues includes applying to each reported issue a merged issue priority based at least partially on a combination of at least two of:

visibility data relating to the number of times the relevant reported issue has been a subject of an issue report;

severity data relating to a pre-defined severity of an associated issue type;

exposure data relating to a potential loss associated with the relevant reported issue;

performance data indicative of a past performance of a reporting entity; and

performance data indicative of a past performance of a reported entity.

17. An apparatus which comprises:

receiving means for receiving a plurality of issue reports from respective reporting entities, each issue report being indicative of a reported issue in the system which requires a corresponding response activity;

parsing means for parsing the plurality of issue reports, to obtain priority criterion data relating to at least one priority criterion which is unrelated to respective dates and/or times of the plurality of issue reports;

prioritizing means for automatically prioritizing the reported issues by applying to each reported issue an issue priority based at least partially on the associated priority criterion data; and

communication means for communicating at least some of the reported issues to an agent to perform corresponding response activities, the response activities to be performed in order of their issue priorities.

18. A computer-readable medium comprising instruction which, when implemented by one or more machines, cause the one or more machines to perform the following operations:

receiving a plurality of issue reports from respective reporting entities, each issue report being indicative of a reported issue in the system which requires a corresponding response activity;

parsing the plurality of issue reports in respect of each reported issue, to obtain priority criterion data relating to at least one priority criterion which is unrelated to respective dates and/or times of the plurality of issue reports;

automatically prioritizing the reported issues by applying to each reported issue an issue priority based at least partially on the associated priority criterion data; and

communicating at least some of the reported issues to an agent to perform corresponding response activities, the response activities to be performed in order of their issue priorities.