TECHNIQUES FOR HELP DESK MANAGEMENT

• US 20100106542A1
• Filed: 10/28/2008
• Published: 04/29/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/28/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus Software, Inc. (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Novell Incorporated (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Anderson, Eric, Green, Tammy Anita, Carter, Stephen R., Isaacson, Scott Alan
• Granted Patent: US 8,655,713 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06395 Quality analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0203 Market surveys; Market polls
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes

Abstract

Techniques for help desk management are provided. A user'"'"'s experience with a resource is captured via a rating. The rating is recorded along with other metrics associated with a processing environment of the user and proactive action taken in response to configuration or performance problems with the user.

Claims

1. A machine-implemented method, comprising:

activating a questionnaire that is presented to a user;

receiving a rating from and assigned by the user in response to the questionnaire, wherein the rating is a value assigned by the user and represents an opinion that the user has with respect to a quality of service that the user experienced with a particular resource; and

recording the rating and resource identity for the resource for subsequent action and analysis.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein activating further includes presenting the questionnaire when the user logs out.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein activating further includes presenting the questionnaire when the user activates an icon or an option that initiates the questionnaire.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein activating further includes presenting the questionnaire to the user in response to other ratings received from other users representing their perceived experiences with the resource when those other ratings are deemed inconclusive to diagnose a problem for purposes of soliciting the user for the rating of the resource.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein activating further includes presenting the questionnaire to the user in response to a previous rating supplied by the user for the resource that was deemed unfavorable in view of a threshold value to determine if the user'"'"'s experience with the resource has improved via the rating.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving further includes providing a scale for the user to select the rating and permitting the user to add comments to accompany the rating.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein recording further includes automatically gathering other information from a processing environment of the user to accompany the rating and to be recorded, wherein the other information includes one or more of:

an Internet Protocol (IP) address for a device of the user, applications executing in the processing environment, active virtual private networks within the processing environment, processor load, memory fragmentation, signatures of the applications, a version of operating system, virtual machines running in the processing environment, a bandwidth of network connection being used by the processing environment, a bandwidth load, subnet addresses, and metrics gathered by diagnostic utilities that process directly on the device of the user.

8. A machine-implemented method, comprising:

collecting ratings assigned by users for their experience with a resource;

obtaining other metrics when collecting the ratings, one or more of the other metrics are obtained with each rating and are associated with a different processing environment for a different user;

correlating the ratings with the other metrics to identify a performance or configuration problem with the resource; and

alerting a help desk to the performance or configuration problem.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein collecting further includes collecting at least some ratings via active solicitation and other ratings via user-initiated actions.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein collecting further includes identifying the resource as a portable and wireless device or system.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein correlating further includes analyzing comments associated with one or more of the ratings and the other metrics to assist in identifying the performance or configuration problem with the resource.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising adding the comments to a repository that is subsequently analyzed after the performance or configuration problem is resolved to identify particular users that were timely and descriptive and ranking these particular users to give future comments supplied by these particular users more weight than other non-ranked users and their future comments.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein correlation further includes deriving a particular correlation in response to changes in historical data.

14. The method of claim 8, wherein alerting further includes increasing priority for the help desk to remedy the performance or configuration problem when one or more of the users are identified as high-priority users.

15. The method of claim 8, wherein alerting further includes providing feedback to one or more of the users, wherein the feedback is an automated presentation providing summary totals for the ratings, identification of the performance or configuration problem, and/or a current status for addressing the performance or configuration problem by the help desk.

16. A machine-implemented method, comprising:

a client rating service implemented in a computer-readable storage medium on a client device of a network; and

a help desk management service implemented in a computer-readable storage medium on a service device of the network;

wherein the client rating service acquires a rating for an experience that a user has with respect to a resource from the point-of-view of the user, and wherein the rating is supplied over the network to the help desk management service, the help desk management service records the rating and proactively discovers a performance or configuration problem with the resource when the rating is correlated with other ratings from other users of the network and with other metrics collected with the rating and the other ratings.

17. The method of claim 16 further comprising, a repository for housing the rating, the other ratings and the metrics.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the client rating service collects comments from the user with the rating and the comments are housed in the repository with the rating, the other ratings and the metrics.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the client rating service is activated based on user action.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the help desk management service activates the client rating service to solicit the rating.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein the help desk management service alerts help desk personnel of the performance or configuration problem or the help desk management service automatically fixes or notifies the user of a fix for the performance of configuration problem.

22. A machine-implemented system, comprising

a rating implemented in a computer-readable storage medium and to be processed on a network by a help desk management service;

and

the help desk management service implemented in a computer-readable storage medium and to process on the network;

wherein the rating is acquired from a user and is a user-perceived experience with a resource, the rating is sent to the help desk management service and correlated with other ratings from other users and their experiences with the resource and in response to the correlation one or more proactive actions are taken by a help desk.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the rating is unsolicited by the help desk management service.

24. The system of claim 22, wherein the rating is solicited by the help desk management service in response to the other ratings from the other users or a pattern detected with the resource by the help desk management service.

25. The system of claim 22, wherein the one or more proactive actions are assigned priority in response to an identity associated with the user, in response to an identity for the resource, or in response to a volume associated with the other ratings from the other users.

26. The system of claim 22, wherein a pattern is mined from information collected from the user and other users to identify one or more of the following:

a configuration problem related to the resource, a hardware problem, a network problem, and a software problem.