diagnosis tool

[Margareth Soppe]

Dear Netters,

We have a question for you. At the moment we are looking for a system
to support the service organisation of our telecommunications company.
People call this organisation with their complaints, and the ladies
(most of them are ladies) behind the telephone should perform the first
steps in diagnosis. We want to build a system to support these ladies, and
we are looking for tools that allow us to do so.

The main requirements for the tool are:
- the system should guide the ladies in the diagnosis process. During this
diagnosis the ladies ask the caller questions, look into available databases
and perform measurements on the telecommunication network. Typically a
diagnosis involves only 3 or 4 steps. The number of possible `paths' in
diagnosis however is very large.
- the system should give information on the available services and products.
E.g. show pictures of telephones, give information on how to put off alarms on
PABX's etc. Again, because of the large number of products and services,
the system should contain a little information on each of a very large number
of items.
- maintenance of knowledge should be well taken care of. One group of
people will maintain the knowledge and distribute new releases all over the
country. They should have the tools to be able to do so.
- the result of the diagnosis (trouble ticket) should be forwarded to
the people who perform the repairs.
- the system should be connected to a number of existing databases, both
to retrieve and to store information.

We are looking for a tool, that allows us to build a system like this.
We already know about the Philips DSS system, and we are also considering
building all of it ourselves in Smalltalk.

If any of you has further suggestions please mail it to us. If we get many
suggestions, we'll put a summary on the net.

Margareth Soppe
M.M....@research.ptt.nl

Lia Gerritse
C.J.Ge...@research.ptt.nl