Cloud-based diagnostics and remediation

• US 9,449,278 B2
• Filed: 08/02/2013
• Issued: 09/20/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 04/12/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Davlos, Efstratios N., Schmitt, Francimar C., Brown, Edmund R., Condon, Gavin Anthony
• Primary Examiner(s): Hill, Stanley K
• Assistant Examiner(s): Buss, Benjamin
• Application Number:
  US13/958,150
• Publication Number:
  US 20140310222A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,145 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0275 Fault isolation and identification, e.g. classify fault; estimate cause or root of failure
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0278 Qualitative, e.g. if-then rules; Fuzzy logic; Lookup tables; Symptomatic search; FMEA
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2294 by remote test
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/04 Inference or reasoning models
• 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

Abstract

Troubleshooting a technical problem on a user device using a network-based remediation platform. Receiving problem statements relating to technical problems associated with a user device, activating a domain of cases, assigning a score for the cases based on a scoring algorithm, and determining one or more remediation actions to suggest based on the score.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

one or more processors; and

a computer-readable medium including one or more sequences of instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to;

initiate a troubleshooting session for a remote user device connected to the system through a network;

receive troubleshooting session data including user-identified symptoms and device specifications for the user device;

store a plurality of diagnostic case hierarchies describing possible diagnostic solutions for a plurality of technical problems;

generate effectiveness data describing an effectiveness of the diagnostic solutions for solving past technical problems;

transmit the effectiveness data to the user device for diagnosing a symptom;

analyze the troubleshooting session data, diagnostic case hierarchies, and effectiveness data in order to recommend one or more remediation inferences for the troubleshooting session, the remediation inferences for diagnostically resolving the user-identified symptoms,

dynamically generate a package of one or more scripts for the troubleshooting session based on the remediation inferences for the troubleshooting session;

transmit the package of one or more scripts for the troubleshooting session to the user device for execution on the user device which, when executed on the user device, run a diagnostic test to determine a cause of the user-identified symptom and to recommend a solution to the user-identified symptom; and

accept feedback from a user device describing the effectiveness of the recommended diagnostic solutions; and

store the feedback for use in future analysis.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions cause the system to:

gather user-identified symptoms;

analyze device specifications;

identify one or more cases from the case hierarchies having attributes matching the symptoms and specifications;

score the one or more identified cases using a scoring algorithm for selecting the cases most likely to provide solutions to the identified symptoms; and

prompt the user to execute one or more action recommended by one or more cases from a group of highest scoring case.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the instructions cause the system to:

receive feedback that one or more of the actions resolved the identified symptom; and

store information indicating that the recommended actions resolved the identified symptom.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the instructions cause the system to:

receive feedback that one or more of the actions did not resolve the identified symptom;

identify an additional case from the case hierarchies having attributes matching the symptoms and specifications;

score the additional case using a scoring algorithm;

determine that the additional case has a score exceeding a predetermined threshold; and

prompt the user to execute one or more action recommended by the additional case.

5. A method of troubleshooting comprising:

receiving a problem statement describing a technical problem associated with a user device, the problem statement including symptoms associated with the technical problem;

selecting a first problem domain comprising a plurality of past troubleshooting cases containing a symptom identified in the problem statement;

generating a score for each troubleshooting case in the plurality of past troubleshooting cases, where the score for a particular one of the troubleshooting cases is generated based on weighted scores for each symptom corresponding to the troubleshooting case that matches the symptoms in the problem statement;

determining whether the score for any of the troubleshooting cases exceeds a threshold score;

when a score of a troubleshooting case within the first problem domain exceeds a threshold score, delivering a remediation object associated with the troubleshooting case to the user device;

when the scores of a troubleshooting cases within the first problem domain do not exceed a threshold score, iteratively selecting and scoring additional problem domains until a troubleshooting case having a score exceeding the threshold score is identified.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

receiving a user input relating to a technical problem of the user device;

transmitting a request for the results of a diagnostic test that can be performed by the user device; and

receiving the results of the diagnostic test, wherein the problem statement comprises a combination of user-identified and the results of the diagnostic test.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

retrieving the plurality of database items from a case database, wherein the database items comprise cases that represent technical performance situations and remediation actions that be performed to remediate problems associated with the situations.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

assigning a weight to each of the cases to reflect the likelihood that a remediation action will address a technical performance situation; and

wherein the step of determining a score of a case comprises adjusting the score based on the weight of the case.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein the remediation object comprises an instruction to a user of the user device to perform an action.

10. The method of claim 5, wherein the remediation object comprises a script for performing a remediation action on the user device, the method further comprising:

packaging the script in a form that can be interpreted by the user device; and

transmitting the packaged script to the user.

11. The method of claim 5, wherein a first weighted score generated for a symptom in a first past troubleshooting case is different than a second weighted score generated for the symptom in a second past troubleshooting case.