Since 1987, AT&T's, and now Avaya's, Services organization has used artificial intelligence technology in the form of expert system tools, in conjunction with its human technicians, to provide its customers with first-rate maintenance support. Messaging is supported by the INTUITY AUDIX Expert System, which is a computer system that facilitates solving problems in a given field or application by drawing inference from a knowledge base developed from real-life experiences. The Expert System works in the background by collecting data from a remote location. It is not an interactive tool.
How Does the Expert System Work?
The INTUITY Audix Expert System performs remote diagnostics in response to alarms reported by the customer's products to the Technical Service Center's alarm-receiving system. In addition, the tool collects data from the product to assess many internal conditions that could be indicative of a potential problem to the customer. For example, the tool can assess these types of potential problems:
System reboots, to check on resource utilization
Available ports and disk space
Identify failure signatures that might not have yet created alarms
Trouble tickets are annotated with results from the expert sessions, which can include ticket closure for the alarm problem, referral to a human technician for further analysis, referral to customers as a facility (non-AVAYA product) problem, and/or a technician dispatch recommendation with needed parts identified.
In addition to standard maintenance documentation, expert system diagnostics are based on the most recent field and development knowledge and the product's internal data records. Extensive databases provide details that explain why a particular recommendation was made. These recommendations, called Product Performance Recommendations (PPRs), can be accessed by a field technician for on-site repairs or by a TSC technician when a call to the customer is required. Regular reviews of the data by Services and Avaya Labs provide improved diagnostic effectiveness of the expert system tests and recommendations. Technicians also have online access to PPR descriptions so that any changes in diagnostics in the expert systems are immediately available to technicians.
For example, if a messaging system starts showing signs of a limited amount of hard drive space, an alarm is reported to the alarm-receiving system. A trouble ticket is created and assigned to the Expert System, which then connects to the product and analyzes this alarm and can execute the appropriate commands to clear the condition. Trouble tickets are annotated with results from the expert sessions, and the ticket then can be closed. If the condition requires human intervention, the Expert System's monitoring staff then notifies the customer recommending that the customer increases the hard drive storage.