(this translation was kindly provided by Rosina Weber)

A naturally intelligent program

More than a tool oriented to help desk automatization, HelpDesk-3 aims at providing operational support services, even simulating the help-desk, when it or domain experts are not available.Based upon Knowledge Engineering concepts, Helpdesk-3 applies CBR associated to grammar and phonetic algorithms and to specialization structures to store and retrieve knowledge in an intelligent way.

Distinct from other software offered in the market which are oriented to management support (creating orders, control strong statistically oriented), HelpDesk-3 addresses search and identification of procedures and problem solving.

Its aim is not to automate the help-desk center, but to be the helpdesk itself.

Help Desk concept

A Help Desk is a function performed by an organization   aimed at providing information or giving support in problem solving coming from either internal or external users.

Help Desk functioning

Help Desk searches for answers to  problems. From the identification of a problem, a case base is searched in order to identify similar situations to present the procedures performed in these situations. The HELPDESK-3 user describes his/her problem to the system which will then characterize the problem originating a search in the existing case base. Using AI algorithms (CBR) that support this search, the user receives a list of solutions that match the problem.

Software technology

AI is the technology used by HelpDesk-3. The natural knowledge is obtained by the HelpDesk-3, which creates a case base (Knowledge). This knowledge is provided so the whole organization can access it.

HELPDESK-3 can be used in different ways, varying in accordance with your company's structure, employees level, etc.

Open:
It represent a general use tool, where users research a knowledge base to solve their problems. This knowledge base is managed by the Help Desk team, solving cases and sending them back to the case-base, or asking the Support Team to solve particular cases on given subjects.

Centralized:
Creating a HelpDesk Center in a company, it provides support to problem solving.With such architecture, the usual customer support structure is maintained. The user contacts the Help Desk Center that searches the knowledge base to provide a solution.

Implementation support

Working together, " Tree Tools Informática" and the client model the functioning of HELPDESK-3, both internally and externally.

Externally : Definitions about how to implement HELPDESK-3 in the company, which division is in charge of maintenance, whether choosing for an open or centralized architecture, installation on the local net, etc..

Internally : Standards on case descriptions, knowledge bases names, consultation, export and import of data, and dictionary maintenance.

Training

We start with a training phase to train the Help Desk team, getting acquainted with the technology and becoming experts on the system.

There are three levels of users:
System administrator (SYSADMIN) - The administrator knows about the security levels of the system, access patterns, architectures of the bases, new bases creation, base distribution strategies, subject classification, etc.

Case Base Master - Each knowledge base has a MASTER user, who is responsible for specific tasks, such as: users maintenance, dictionary maintenance, import and export of bases, etc.

Regular user - The users are also trained, learning to benefit from the new tool generating productive results.

Knowledge bases availability

"Tree Tools Informática" has developed a Help Desk Center to make Case Bases available. The new cases generated in the company are sent by the Help Desk Team to "Tree Tools Informática", that will treat them to make new cases available.
Such exchange between the companies may provide great benefits, as by sending some cases, the company will receive all centralized cases from the "Tree Tools Informática" during the period.


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

CONCEPTS

Question:
What is HELPDESK-3 ?

Answer:
More than a tool oriented to help desk automatization, HelpDesk-3 aims at providing operational support services, even simulating the help-desk.

Question:
What is the purpose of HELPDESK-3 ?

Answer:
Any application in which expert knowledge can be acquired and stored and the definition of procedures and recommendations is feasible in terms of a given situation. Hence, it can be used as an additional tool in help desk environments that have already been developed based on traditional tools that do not offer intelligent mechanisms to identify and recommend procedures, or simply as a basic tool to provide operational support service.

Question:
In what elements the HELPDESK-3 functioning is based on?

Answer:

From characteristics or information that embody a situation, HELPDESK-3 is able to locate every case (any previous situation that has already been treated somehow) that keeps some correlation, even a remote one, to the given situation and using them the system presents procedures and applicable recommendations.

Question:
In which domains can HELPDESK-3 be applied to?

Answer:
As it is a development tool, any domain is viable.

Computer systems, maintenance, process control, medicine, customer services, among others, either automating and guiding procedures or recommending activities and diagnosing failures, or even locating information on a given subject or part.

Question:
What are the typical applications ? What are the advantages ?

Answer:
Among typical applications are:
Diagnosis and Distributed Support in Corporative Networks
Network management
Database management
Development and support
Tools support
etc..

With the growing distribution of hardware and software in corporative networks, often geographically spreaded, the support to each node of these networks is at times difficult and slow. With a diagnosis system and a distributed support, each of the nodes could have a case base of solved problems within the company providing proper solution when a problem occurs, without the need of a support team. The support team would be only required to solve new problems, which tends to reduce with time.

Support tool to customer support centers (Hot-Lines, Help Desk, Etc)
Software Houses and Software Sales
Customer Support
Manufacturers, Retail and Equipment Suppliers

Companies that commercialize equipment, software programs, and others that require the customer operation, have been providing service channels to solve customer problems. This type of service is supposed to be quick, precise and standardized. The customer needs quick and correct answers. HELPDESK-3 can be the proper tool to provide such information.


Intelligent and Automatic Manual Development
Service Centers
Banks
System's Operation
Execution and Process Control
Process Monitoring
Etc...

Every activity embodying decision making or stating of procedures for specific subjects such as customer service in banks and governmental agencies, requires uniformity. When only few persons have the knowledge about proper actions and solutions, the company is prone to errors in the absence of these persons. A proper tool able to store and access this knowledge guaranties the uniformity and precision of the service.

Diagnosis and Maintenance
Repair in Sold and Rent Equipment
Maintenance and Implementation of Mobile and Land Telephonic Networks
Vehicle Maintenance
Preventive and Corrective Maintenance of Product Lines

The diagnosis and the actions to be performed in maintenance activities are based upon expert knowledge. However, the expert may not be always available or may even not be aware of the proper solution. If we can capture the knowledge of several experts and store it in a case-base, this knowledge can be accessed by everyone who needs it, either locally or remotely. Then, theoretically, it is like having all the experts available simultaneously. This type of application also ensures uniformity and continuity to the operations.


Question:
What is C.B.R (Case Based Reasoning) ?

Answer:
It is a recent AI technique applied to the development of knowledge based systems, which attempts to simulate the human act of identifying and solving problems. Studying human behavior, we have observed that an expert with several years of experience on a given domain eventually gathers a great amount of known cases. Hence, for a given situation, the expert knows possible procedures and solutions to de adopted. From it, the knowledge becomes accessible when a similar case is characterized. Whenever one can match a new situation to a previous one that has already been treated, it is possible to reuse the already implemented procedure.

Question:
What is the aim of HELPDESK-3 ? Is it a control system of the problems to be solved?

Answer:
No, it is much more. HELPDESK-3 is based on the principle that it is more important to avoid pending problems than to control them. Several companies are still attempting to generate control processes and means to deal with service orders and forget that what is really important to the user is to have the problem solved. The main problem with a control oriented system is that while orders are being controlled, several problems that have already been solved remain being managed to be solved again. Besides controlling, HELPDESK-3 attempts to avoid that the user needs to apply for receiving support.

Question:
How does it avoid it ?

Answer:
HELPDESK-3 enables the problems to be solved when originated, so they can be solved by the user him/herself. To do so, the system offers a powerful search device to solve the given problem. Hence, the user can locate and get the answers without the need of a customer service.


Question:
What is left to the maintenance and support staff ?

Answer:
Mainly, they will address new problems that have not been solved yet and store them in the case base. The experience and competence of this staff should be oriented to the study of new problems and not merely to the ones that repeat often. Besides, they can also count on the HELPDESK-3 to help them solve new problems. Secondly, the staff needs the time to improve their expertise. Working on the same type of problems may limit their expertise to old techniques, avoiding individual growth as well as the company's.


Question:
Where does the knowledge base or case base come from?

Answer:
Comes from the idea that most of the problems have already occurred before making it possible to reuse the same procedures that have been adopted to solve them. This type of problems waste the time that could be oriented to the acquisition of new expertise.


FUNCTIONING

Question:
How does the case have to be represented to allow search?

Answer:
Depending upon the standard to be employed in each application, one can use from natural language to structured parameters (fixed rules).


Question:
What if the parameters input are different from the ones given during the storing of the cases? Will the case be found?

Answer:
Yes. This is the main capability of a CBR tool. Even though different words, concepts, values or characteristics are informed, HELPDESK-3 will be able to locate similar cases.


Question:
How does HELPDESK-3 locate similar cases ?

Answer:
Based on knowledge-based heuristic search algorithms. Knowledge provided by synonyms, grammar variations, structures "part of", and phonetic variations can be used to locate cases.


Question:
What about searches that do not find matching cases?

Answer:
HELPDESK-3 returns the most similar cases, even if they are not very similar.  This is heuristic search. It does not necessarily has to be exact, it may present values that indicate some similarity to the desired result.


Question:
What if a case that has never been treated before? If it is a new one?

Answer:
Then the experts have to work on solving this problem and after applying and testing the solution they will store it for future reuse. This is exactly the human process that is represented by HELPDESK-3.

Question:
Does the generation of cases depend on the act of an expert on all the cases that will be stored?
Do we always need to have been faced with a problem so that it can be stored?

Answer:
No. As it happens with the human process, it is not necessary to experience every problem that everyone has been through in order to assimilate the required knowledge. Simply by accessing the information obtained by someone else and analyzing it, one can frame it from his/her standpoint to retain it. HELPDESK-3 can also retrieve knowledge from external sources.


Question:
What are these external resources?

Answer:
One could be an existing case base that have been treated and solved by some other staff or company can become available to HELPDESK-3 users such as, for instance, different branches from the same company or experts. Libraries of solved cases can also be generated by special purpose groups. In addition, we can make use of other sources such as manuals, books, cd's, bbs's. This task of obtaining and storing knowledge can be performed progressively, trying to anticipate incoming problems.


Question:
How do the applications are developed in HELPDESK-3 ?

Answer:
Through a specific methodology that will be transferred to the customer company during the implementation of the system in the company. This methodology has been developed by "Tree Tools" and will be transferred during the consultancy for the system's development.


Question:
How does the user access the cases? Does each case base have an individual application and interface?

Answer:
No the access is always through HELPDESK-3, regardless of the case-base one wants to access. The only restriction that may apply is the conditional authorization that must be provided by the administrator of the base in which a user chooses.


Question:
Can the user access as many bases and domains as he/she has been authorized?

Answer:
Yes, exactly. Doing so, several domains can become available within the same company and its employees.


Question:
How is the connection to a base made?

Answer:
Though an account and a password, since the user is authorized. This access can be done both stand-alone (from its own workstation or notebook) and by the network (where different users share the same base).


Question:
Does HELPDESK-3 allow some sort of customization of the applications ?

Answer:
In some ways, yes. Some of the capabilities may be enabled or disabled depending on the user profile and on the domain of application. Some bases might be used following specific standards so that specific needs are accomplished. The use of HELPDESK-3 can be defined to fit each company.


ARCHITECTURE

Question:
What platform should be chosen? What are the required operational system or database ?

Answer:
The HELPDESK-3 release 1.0 is developed to run in MS-Windows, with a graphic interface and its own database, making it accessible even to stand-alone execution. This allows users to use the knowledge base wherever they are.


BENEFITS

Question:
What are the capabilities of HELPDESK-3 ?

Answer:
Capture of new cases
definition of specific purpose cases and control of agendas
follow up cases throughout its use
integration of additional information
case indexing
use of a specific dictionary to each domain
environment customization
powerful tools to access cases
consulting device based on structured parameters
case maintenance
case bases management
unlimited definition of case bases and domains
user management to each base
import/export interfacing between the case bases
interface with external applications (under consultation)
base optimization (compacting and reorganizing)
report device (file, printer or video)


IMPLEMENTATION

Question:
How is HELPDESK-3 sold?

Answer:
The commercialization goes beyond sales. The implementation of HELPDESK-3 requires the use of a methodology that matches available resources of the customer. It is very important that concepts on manipulation and knowledge engineering are transferred to the customer besides the product capabilities. Thus, sale is combined with training and consultancy services and to a pilot project. These activities are developed within a limited time frame. Additional service may be hired according to needs.


Question:
What other services are available ?

Answer:

Besides the implementation services, other services such as training, development and consultancy are available.


Training

Additional training for new users, base administrators, and product administrators may be required due to the spreading of the product over the company. Each with an individual profile and interation.


Consultancy

Consultancy may be contracted aiming at new areas of application, assessment of project feasibility, methodologies, knowledge representation and acquisition, etc.


Development

It is possible that "Tree Tools" works in partnership with the customer in the development and maintenance of HELPDESK-3 applications. In this case, our company will be in charge of analysis, design, development and maintenance of the case base.


Libraries Availability

"Tree Tools" intends to offer case libraries for specific domains. These libraries may be obtained for individual use or to aggregate them to customer's bases (by importing cases).


HELPDESK-3 user's groups

Through the development of HELPDESK-3 user's groups, "Tree Tools" can provide the exchange of cases among users. Hence, each user can supply the group with its new cases on a monthly basis, and "Tree Tools", after proper treatment, offers a condensed volume of all cases to other users. These cases can be used to generate new case bases or to update old ones.


contact:
schedule a HELPDESK-3 demonstration in your company
Info : treetools@treetools.com.br