Support Center Solution

You can use the Support Center Framework to model an application as a single problem analyzer/troubleshooter. However, combining other components of the LogicNets platform, you could easily extend that application to create a complete support center solution to manage a complex technical support workflow. 

Typically, a Support Center Solution might consist of multiple parts:

• A portal application 
• Multiple troubleshooting/problem analyzer applications
• A data store
• Predictive analytics
• A Knowledge Center (optional)

In a Support Center solution, the Portal Application serves as the main entry point in which users can register and manage technical support cases.

• The Portal Application can present a main menu in which users indicate problem areas and select a specific troubleshooter for performing problem diagnosis. LogicNets recommends creating multiple troubleshooters/problem analyzers, each one focusing on a specific small area rather than a single, large one that covers a complete device.
• Using the Portal Application, multiple users can work on and save support cases. The LogicNets Application Starter Framework provides built-in workflow functionality to support this.
• Optionally, you can import external diagnostic data to the Portal Application to provide baseline information for your troubleshooters/problem analyzers.

LogicNets also provides the ability for you to link to the Knowledge Center your troubleshooters/problem analyzers, providing instructions and varied reference materials to your users for additional guidance. You could also model and connect interactive guidelines/procedures that help your users resolve identified issues.

Combined with all of this functionality, you can also configure your application to use external data stores to save the results of the troubleshooters/problem analyzers for statistical analysis and predictions. LogicNets supports integration with Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL.

 

The Support Center Framework provides mechanisms to help the user with diagnosing and eventually finding the cause of a problem. These include the following:

• Diagnostic questions, which display in the Input Form section
• Possible causes, which display in the Causes section. The system supplements the causes with predictions that indicate likelihood based on historical data.

The Support Center Framework application consists of several sections:

• On the left side of the screen the system displays the Tabs. Using these tabs, you can break down a troubleshooting application into steps or subcategories that result in your user selecting sub-causes for an issue. 
• The Input form in the middle section of the screen displays the diagnostic questions of the fault-finding tree. The user narrows down the set of possible causes while answering these questions.
• On the right side of the screen is the Causes panel, which displays the remaining possible causes based on the user's answers to the diagnostic questions.

 

With the diagnostic questions, the system guides users step-by-step to pinpoint the cause of the problem.
You model the questions in a logicnet or group of logicnets, and you can model the question flow. As part of your model, you place cause nodes at the end of question paths. The system picks up these node types and presents them to the user as a list of possible causes.

As with applications built using the Assessment Framework, you can link additional information and resources to the question to give the user more context or guidance. The system displays resources you link to questions in the information panel.

 

The system continuously updates the Causes panel based on the answer a user selects for a diagnostic question. Before a user answers any questions the system displays all causes (Figure 1). As the user answers questions, however, the system removes from the list those causes that are no longer valid (Figure 2).

 

 

In the causes panel, each cause has a yellow bar and a green bar. The yellow bar indicates the probability of a cause being the correct one, based on earlier assessments. To display this, the system takes all selected causes from the past and visualizes the distribution of these causes.

 

The green bar that shows the system's confidence that the cause is the correct one. The system bases this confidence level based on the historic data combined with the current user's answers to the question. In the pictured example, the answer 'Yes' to the first question has historically led to the selection of 'Handle bar' as the cause in 75% of the cases and 'Pedals' in 25% of the cases.

 

When the user selects a cause, the system displays a popup window containing additional information and the 'Confirm' button, which allows users to confirm the cause. Articles you link to the cause show up in the popup window to give the user additional information and tips for resolving the problem.

After confirming the cause, the user can press the ‘Submit’ button to finalize the assessment and navigate back to the portal. The system only adds the selected cause to the overall statistics after the user submits it.