Ranco Inc.

Charles Grant

A diagnostic tool suite is made available to technicians servicing equipment at residential and business locations using a portable device such as a PDA. The PDA runs a main engine that can execute diagnostic modules, with each diagnostic module corresponding to a particular appliance or device that requires troubleshooting, repair, diagnosis, maintenance or installation. The diagnostic modules use a limited number of templates to define possible screen layouts for each screen displayed to the technician. Additionally, the diagnostic module includes a diagnostic flow definition file wherein each record corresponds to a screen displayed to a technician. The main engine uses the template information and the diagnostic flow definition records to fully define a screen to display to a technician. In this way, an extensible, modular, non-specific diagnostic tool suite is available to a technician. To simplify creation of the diagnostic definition files, a graphical user development tool is provided that allows a non-skilled user to select a template definition, to be prompted for definitions of the fields in that template and to create the diagnostic definition file incorporating the user's input.

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Dublin, OH, United States of America

Charles Grant