Remote services management fault escalation

Details Remote services management fault escalation Remote services management fault escalation

1998-12-30

2004-06-29

Myers, Paul R. (Department: 2181)

Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery

Data processing system error or fault handling

Reliability and availability

C714S025000, C709S224000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06757850

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to computer network fault management systems, and more particularly, to a computer network fault management system having the capability to send e-mail to pre-selected recipients upon the determination of a fault for a computer on a network.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Wide area networks (WAN) have computer systems remotely located from one or more central servers. The central server may be located at a customer support center (CSG) having support personnel located at the CSG for supporting all the computer systems on the WAN. The WAN may often be used for providing customer services, such as banking services. The remotely located computer systems are used by customers who are being charged for functionality provided by the customer support center.
In the event of a remote computer failure or fault, there is currently no process of ensuring that notification of an occurrence of a fault is provided to appropriate remotely located support personnel in a reliable and timely manner. With such a process, it would be possible to do both reactive and proactive maintenance of customer equipment, thereby raising the perceived and actual level of service provided to the customer. A need exists in the art for such a process and apparatus.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a customizable, reliable and timely mechanism and apparatus for alerting customer support personnel to the occurrence of a fault on a customer computer using electronic mail, a relational database, Web technology and paging technology.
Another object of the present invention is to determine whether the customer support personnel have responded to the alert.
Yet a further object of the present invention is to log information concerning the fault and whether the customer support personnel have responded to the fault in one or more databases.
According to the present invention, a remote services management (RSM) fault escalation mechanism provides the ability to send electronic mail to one or more preselected recipients (the selection based upon criteria such as the type of fault, type of machine and customer) on the occurrence of an escalatable fault on a customer computer. The fault and the e-mail routing data is stored in a relational database.
If a recipient of the e-mail does not respond by entering an “incident number” in the database via a Web interface within a predetermined time interval, a daemon process which scans the database at preselected intervals sends a second piece of e-mail to one or more other recipients (with a copy to the primary e-mail recipient). If none of the recipients responds within another time interval, the daemon process inserts into another table an entry containing a paging phone number and predetermined (based on the selection criteria above) numeric value, and also logs the lack of response. A second daemon process examines this table at regular intervals, and processes each entry contained in the table.
These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by a method of notifying at least one remote support person of a fault on a computer system on a computer network. It is determined that a fault has occurred on a computer on the computer network. Notification of the fault is sent to a first remote support person. If the remote support person does not respond within a predetermined time interval, notification is sent to another remote support person.
The foregoing and other objects of the present invention are achieved by an article including at least one sequence of machine executable instructions on a medium bearing the executable instructions in machine readable form, wherein execution of the instructions by one or more processors causes the one or more processors to determine a fault has occurred on a computer on the computer network. Notification of the fault is sent to a first remote support person. If the remote support person does not respond within a predetermined time interval, notification is sent to another remote support person.
The foregoing and other objects of the present invention are achieved by a computer architecture including determining means for determining a fault has occurred on a computer on the computer network. Sending means are provided for sending notification of the fault to a first remote support person. Notification means are provided for sending notification to another remote support person if the remote support person does not respond within a predetermined time interval.
The foregoing and other objects of the present invention are achieved by a computer system including a processor and a memory coupled to the processor. The memory has stored therein sequences of instructions, which, when executed by the processor, causes said processor to perform the steps of determining a fault has occurred on a computer on the computer network. The processor then sends notification of the fault to a first remote support person and if the remote support person does not respond within a predetermined time interval, sends notification to another remote support person.
Still other objects and advantages of the present invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description, wherein the preferred embodiments of the invention are shown and described, simply by way of illustration of the best mode contemplated of carrying out the invention. As will be realized, the invention is capable of other and different embodiments, and its several details are capable of modifications in various obvious respects, all without, departing from the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and description thereof are to be regarded as illustrative in nature, and not as restrictive.


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