Outage management portal leveraging back-end resources to create a role and user tailored front-end interface for coordinating outage responses

• US 8,171,415 B2
• Filed: 06/11/2008
• Issued: 05/01/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/11/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Appleyard, James P., Bruce, Edwin J., Flores, Romelia H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Bashore, William
• Assistant Examiner(s): PHANTANA ANGKOOL, DAVID
• Application Number:
  US12/136,920
• Publication Number:
  US 20090313562A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,420 Days
• Field of Search: 715/747, 715/736, 715/741
• US Class Current: 715/747
• CPC Class Codes: G01D 2204/22 Arrangements for detecting or reporting faults, outages or leaks
• CPC Class Codes: G01D 4/002 Remote reading of utility meters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0253 using browsers or web-pages for accessing management information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/22 comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/06 Generation of reports
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06
• CPC Class Codes: Y02B 90/20 Smart grids as enabling technology in buildings sector smart grids supporting the management or operation of end-user stationary applications in general, or like technologies with no associated climate change mitigation effect Y04S20/00
• CPC Class Codes: Y04S 20/30 Smart metering, e.g. specially adapted for remote reading

Abstract

A solution for centrally managing and federating outage specific information and for rapidly providing controlled access to this information in a role tailored fashion. The information can be gathered and provided in real-time along with programmatically determined proposed actions. An information recipient can configure and dynamically change the manner in which the information is presented, so that relevant information for that recipient can be rapidly digested. For example, a manager with a moderate level of technical knowledge may want information to be presented pictorially and in summary fashion, while a highly technical troubleshooter may want to configure information presentation to show key network statistics and values. In one embodiment, outage information can be presented in a Web portal having multiple discrete and customizable portlets, which include a geography portlet and a system portlet.

Claims

1. A method for implementing a roles based outage management workplace comprising:

serving an outage workplace from a network server to a client used by an identified user, wherein views of said outage workplace comprise a geography view that graphically presents spatially related geographic data illustrating a geographic map corresponding to a network of managed resources, wherein another of said views comprise a system view presenting a schematic of an operational resource within the network of managed resources, wherein the geography view is configured to present a plurality of managed resources upon said geographic map, wherein a selection of one of the resources within the geographic view results in a presentation of data relating to the corresponding operational system being presented in the system view, wherein said outage workplace comprises;

at least one alert view configured to automatically present a notification to at least one user whenever a value of dynamically obtained information or a condition of one of the managed resources exceeds a previously established boundary, wherein at least one user is indicated within a data store to be an individual responsible for taking corrective actions in regard to a situation indicated by the notification wherein when the notification is presented;

a different view of the outage workplace that automatically presents communication specific items to each of the at least one users; and

another view of the outage workplace that when the notification is presented, the another view automatically presents documents from a content repository related to the indicated situation and relevant as determined by a set of programmatic rules.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said outage workplace is a portal and wherein each of said views is a portlet, wherein said method further comprises:

identifying an outage management system for interface customizations based upon at least one of the identified user and a user role; and

constructing the outage management workplace for the interface customizations, wherein said outage workplace comprises the plurality of views, each view comprising view specific programmatic code, wherein a state of one view affects a state of at least one other view so that content changes and user interactive changes made to one view result in changes being made to at least one other view.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the portal is served by a portal server, wherein the portal server is part of a service oriented architecture (SOA), which functions as middleware between back-end and front-end systems.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein said roles comprise an executive role, an operational role, and a maintenance role, said method further comprising:

when said identified user role is the executive role, said outage workplace comprising a plurality of portals comprising outage related information, which is customized for consumption by an executive level user;

when said identified user role is the operational role, said outage workplace comprising a plurality of portals comprising outage related information, which is customized for consumption by an operational level user; and

when said identified user role is the maintenance role, said outage workplace comprising a plurality of portals comprising outage related information, which is customized for consumption by a maintenance level user.

5. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

presenting a user with a customization user interface through which the user is able to customize a set of portlets to be presented within the outage management workplace, wherein the set of portlets presented in the customization user interface for user selection varies based upon user role.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

automatically obtaining content from a plurality of network accessible data sources;

processing said obtained content to conform to standards specific to the outage management system which is different from standards of the data sources; and

populating said views with the processed content, wherein at least a portion of the content that is obtained, processed, and used to populate the views is dynamically changing content that is handled in at least one of real-time and near-real-time.

7. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

identifying a plurality of data sources, a plurality of presentation sources, and a plurality of support sources which are each implemented by at least one of back-end computing systems, which are independent of the outage management system, which is implemented in middleware; and

utilizing programmatic instructions of the middleware to leverage and repurpose resources of the data sources, presentation sources, and support sources for a user role and user customized outage management workplace.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the views is an independent and pluggable component of the outage management workplace, said method further comprising:

serving a customization user interface to the client of the identified user;

permitting the identified user to customize each of the views using the customization user interface; and

permitting the user to choose which of the views is to be included within a user customized version of the outage management workplace based upon user input received via the customization user interface.

9. The method of claim 2, wherein the plurality of portlets comprise a portlet for the geography view, a portlet for the system view, and at least two additional portlets selected from a group of portlets consisting of, an alerting portlet, an instant messaging portlet, a “

wiki”

portlet, a people finder portlet, an outage situation portlet, and an outage situation assigned task list purposed portlet.

10. A portal server comprising:

at least one processor coupled to memory elements through a system bus;

a data store configured to manage digitally encoded customization settings, wherein said customization settings are associated with specific users and comprise user established settings, wherein programmatically implemented customizations are configured to utilize the customization settings when outage workplace portals are served to users

portlet creation software configured to modify a software artifact obtained from at least one presentation source to include data points based upon the obtained outage information, wherein said portlet creation software is further configured to utilize the customization settings from the data store when generating portlets for specific users;

portlet binding software configured to insert code into an outage management portal, which programmatically links a plurality of otherwise independent portlets, wherein the inserted code causes a state of at least one of the portlets to dynamically change based upon at least one of a user interface and a data update to another of the portlets of the outage workplace portal; and

a portal serving component configured to respond to requests from remotely located clients by serving customized outage workplace portals to the remotely located clients, wherein the served outage workplace portals comprise at least a geography portlet and a system portlet, wherein the geography portlet is configured to graphically present spatially related geographic data illustrating a geographic map corresponding to a network of managed resources, and wherein the system portlet is configured to present a schematic of an operational system within the network of managed resources, wherein each of said served outage workplace portals comprise at least one alert portlet configured to automatically present a notification to at least one user whenever a value of dynamically obtained information or a condition of a set of monitored systems exceeds a previously established boundary, wherein at least one user is indicated within a data store to be an individual responsible for taking corrective actions in regard to a situation indicated by the notification wherein when the notification is presented, a portlet of the outage workplace portal automatically presents communication specific items to each of the at least one users, and wherein when the notification is presented, a portlet of the outage workplace portal automatically presents documents from a content repository related to the indicated situation and relevant as determined by a set of programmatic rules.

11. The portal server of claim 10, wherein at least a portion of the served outage workplace portals further comprise at least two portlets selected from a group of portlets consisting of, an alerting portlet, an instant messaging portlet, a “

wiki”

portlet, a people finder portlet, an outage situation portlet, and an outage situation assigned task list purposed portlet.

12. The portal server of claim 10, further comprising:

collaboration software configured to conduct online collaboration communications responsive to a user selection from within a portlet of a served outage workplace portal; and

Web 2.0 software configured to grant access to a shared organization resource from within a portlet of a served outage workplace portal.

13. The portal server of claim 10, further comprising:

a plurality of role specific programmatically implemented customizations for providing role tailored portals, wherein roles specified by the role specific programmatically implemented customizations comprise an executive role, an operational role, and a maintenance role, each tailored for presentation of outage information to different groups of users;

wherein said outage workplace portals are served by the portal server and comprise a plurality of role and user customized portlets;

fetching software configured to dynamically obtain outage information from at least one back-end data source, wherein the portal server is part of a service oriented architecture (SOA), wherein near-real-time metrics are conveyed from a resource to a middleware service provider, to a service gateway, and then to the portal server.

14. The portal server of claim 12, further comprising:

search software configured to search a Web 2.0 data repository for items specific to an outage event, wherein said search software is triggered by an occurrence of a user customized alert condition relating to a current value of the dynamically obtained outage information, which results in a firing of the outage event, wherein said Web 2.0 software alters content of a portlet of the served Web page to include results produced by the search software.

15. The portal server of claim 14, further comprising:

contact querying software configured to search an organization directory for a set of personnel associated with responding to the outage event, wherein said collaboration software alters content of a portlet of the served Web portal to include results produced by the contact querying software.

16. The portal server of claim 10, wherein the geography portlet incorporates a “

mashup”

comprising a map and a plurality of overlaid content, wherein said overlaid content is based upon said obtained outage information.

17. A system providing a Web portal comprising:

at least one processor coupled to one or more memory elements through a system bus;

computer program code stored in the one or more memory elements, wherein execution of the computer program code by the at least one processor generates the Web portal;

said Web portal comprising a plurality of portlets, said portlets comprising;

at least one geography portlet, which incorporates a “

mashup”

comprising a visual map and related interface controls and overlaid content relating to an outage within a network of managed resources, wherein said overlaid content is based upon information dynamically obtained from a plurality of network accessible data sources, and

at least one system portlet, which comprises a schematic of an operational system included within the network of managed resources, wherein the schematic presents real-time information obtained from remotely located system monitoring software that is configured to monitor conditions of the network of managed resources, wherein said overlaid content comprises a plurality of user selectable objects, each corresponding to a different managed resource, wherein a selection one of the user selectable objects in the geography portlet results in content of the system portlet dynamically changing to present content related to the selected managed resource, wherein the geography portlet and the system portlet are customized in accordance with a role of a user and with user established customization settings;

at least one Web 2.0 portlet;

at least one collaboration portlet; and

at least one alert portlet configured to automatically present a notification to at least one user whenever a value of dynamically obtained information or a condition of the monitored systems exceeds a previously established boundary, wherein at least one user is indicated within a data store to be an individual responsible for taking corrective actions in regard to a situation indicated by the notification wherein when the notification is presented, the collaboration portlet automatically presents communication specific items to each of the at least one users, and wherein when the notification is presented, the Web 2.0 portlet automatically presents documents from the content repository related to the indicated situation and relevant as determined by a set of programmatic rules.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one Web 2.0 portlet configured to share information among a plurality of users, said shared information comprising searchable content repositories of user provided and updated information designed to provide insight relating to outages of the network of managed resources;

and wherein the at least one collaboration portlet configured to facilitate communications among a distributed group of users involved in outage management to permit said users to rapidly respond to an outage situation.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one Web 2.0 portlet configured to share information among a plurality of users, said shared information comprising searchable content repositories of user provided and updated information designed to provide insight relating to outages of the network of managed resources.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one collaboration portlet configured to facilitate communications among a distributed group of users involved in outage management to permit said users to rapidly respond to an outage situation.