Method and system for automatically generating network trouble tickets

• US 7,818,631 B1
• Filed: 04/28/2005
• Issued: 10/19/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: T-Mobile Innovations LLC (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Original Assignee: Sprint Communications Company LP (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Inventors: Halikhedkar, Abhijith, Wiles, Gary Scott
• Primary Examiner(s): Guyton; Philip
• Assistant Examiner(s): Riad; Amine
• Application Number:
  US11/116,856
• Time in Patent Office: 2,000 Days
• Field of Search: 714/48
• US Class Current: 714/48
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13056 Routines, finite state machines
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13163 Fault alarm
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13175 Graphical user interface [GUI], WWW interface, visual indication
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13349 Network management
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 3/0075 Fault management techniques

Abstract

A method and system for are provided for generating a ticketing report in a communications networking environment. The method includes receiving an alarm event that has a set of event attributes, which includes an event identifier; automatically evaluating the attributes against a set of ticketing rules; determining whether a ticketing report should be generated, and if so, then identifying one or more target ticketing systems; generating a ticketing message based on the alarm-event attributes and the identified one or more target ticketing system(s); routing the event to the target ticketing system, whereby the ticketing report can be automatically generated; receiving a ticket identifier that identifies the generated ticketing report; and associating the ticket identifier with the event identifier. The system includes an alarm-event manager, a ticketing engine coupled to the alarm-event manager, a ticketing router coupled to the ticketing engine and to one or more ticket-outputting systems, and a data structure coupled to the ticketing engine and containing a set of ticketing rules that define criteria to be met to automatically generating a ticketing report.

Claims

1. One or more computer-storage media having computer-usable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of automatically generating an alarm ticketing report in a communications networking environment, the method comprising:

receiving an alarm event having one or more attributes, including an event identifier, wherein the alarm event is a message generated by a network device about said network device'"'"'s operability;

determining if a ticketing report previously has been generated that is associated with the alarm event;

if no ticketing report associated with the alarm event previously has been generated, automatically referencing a set of ticketing rules from a first data structure;

without user intervention, evaluating the one or more attributes against the ticketing rules to determine whether a ticketing report should be generated;

if a ticketing report should be generated, then identifying a target ticketing system;

generating a ticketing message based on the alarm-event attributes and the target ticketing system; and

routing the event to the target ticketing system, whereby the ticketing report can be automatically generated.

2. The media of claim 1, wherein the network device includes at least one of a physical component, a physical subcomponent, a logical component, and a logical subcomponent.

3. The media of claim 2, wherein the ticketing rules define criteria to be met to have a ticketing report automatically generated.

4. The media of claim 3, wherein identifying a target ticketing system includes receiving a target-ticketing-system identifier incident to evaluating the one or more attributes against the ticketing rules.

5. The media of claim 4, wherein generating a ticketing message comprises formatting the ticketing message in a format that can be processed for the target ticketing system.

6. The media of claim 5, wherein the ticketing message includes a set of ticketing data that can be used to generate the ticketing report, wherein the set of ticketing-data includes at least one of a timestamp of the alarm event, a number of alarm events generated by the network device, a frequency of alarm events generated by the device, and a duration of time during which the alarm event has been applicable.

7. The media of claim 6, further comprising receiving a ticket identifier that identifies the generated ticketing report.

8. The media of claim 7, further comprising associating the ticket identifier with the event identifier.

9. A method of generating a ticketing report in a communications networking environment, the method comprising:

receiving an alarm event having one or more attributes, including an event identifier, wherein the alarm event indicates information regarding the operability of a physical or logical component or subcomponent;

determining if a ticketing report previously has been generated that is associated with the alarm event;

if no ticketing report A associated with the alarm event previously has been generated, automatically evaluating the one or more attributes against a set of ticketing rules;

determining whether a ticketing report should be generated, and if so, then identifying one or more target ticketing systems;

generating a ticketing message based on the alarm-event attributes and the identified one or more target ticketing system(s);

routing the alarm event to the target ticketing system, whereby the ticketing report can be automatically generated;

receiving a ticket identifier that identifies the generated ticketing report; and

associating the ticket identifier with the event identifier.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the ticketing rules define criteria that must be met in order to automatically generate a ticketing report.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the ticketing message includes:

the event identifier;

a username identifier; and

a target-ticketing-system identifier.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising depicting on a display device the association between the event identifier and the ticket identifier.

13. An alarm-ticketing system comprising:

an alarm-event manager, wherein an alarm event indicates information regarding the operability of a physical or logical component or subcomponent;

a ticketing engine coupled to the alarm-event manager;

a ticketing router coupled to the ticketing engine and to one or more ticket-outputting systems; and

a data structure coupled to the ticketing engine and containing a set of ticketing rules that define criteria to be met to automatically generating a ticketing report if no ticketing-report associated with the alarm event previously has been generated.