International Business Machines Corporation

Elizabeth A Schreiber

David B Styles

Barnaby L Court

Radhika Aggarwal

Brian John Cragun

Kathryn Heninger Britton

Jason Robert McGee

Christopher Creighton Mitchell

Samar Choudhary

Joseph A Bohn

William H Krebs, Jr

Michael Peter Etgen

Timothy Jude O'Keefe

Brian Owen Wood

Andrew L Hanson

Radhika Bhatnagar

Anjan Reddy Kundavaram

Robert Thomas Uthe

John William Sweitzer

Shikha Srivastava

Carol Ann Jones

Donald Francis Ferguson

Richard Adam King

Roland Albert Merrick

Vijay Pandiarajan

Douglas Robert Petty

Timothy G Shortley

David Bruce Lection

Clifton Malcolm Nock

Charles Edward Burkett

Thomas Jay Allen

William H Krebs Jr

Systems, methods and articles of manufacture are disclosed for synchronizing a transaction profile with a resolution status of a problem experienced by an application. The problem may be detected for the application. A transaction profile may be retrieved for the detected problem. The transaction profile may include a sequence of transactions to be performed on the system to remedy the open problem. Transactions occurring on the system may be monitored, and an instance of the transaction profile may be updated accordingly to create a synchronized transaction profile.

Synchronizing problem resolution task status using awareness of current state and transaction history

An approach is provided to display a common display page on a variety of display devices using the item's tab order property to determine the display order. Controls that are displayed on a display device typically have a tab order. When a window that has controls is displayed, the cursor is typically placed at the control with the lowest (i.e., first) tab order. When the user presses the tab key, the cursor moves to the control corresponding to the next lowest tab order. This allows the designer to design a single window (or panel) that is displayed differently on constrained devices. However, even though the window is displayed differently, using tab order mapping maintains a consistent visible proximity between controls despite the type of display device being used by the user.

Tab order mapping of user interfaces

Content aggregation is used to build administration consoles. Preferred embodiments enable providing a solution-based approach to information technology ('IT') administration, whereby content can be flexibly arranged to provide a content view that is adapted for the IT solution deployed in a particular IT environment. In preferred embodiments, portal technology is used for the aggregation framework, and portlets are used for creating content. Alternatively, other approaches such as struts and tiles may be used. Preferred embodiments deploy an administration console as a Web-accessible application, and this console consolidates the administration interfaces for an arbitrary set of management operations, including administration of an arbitrary collection of hardware and/or software resources. Roles/permissions may be used when rendering content for the console, thereby customizing a view to individual end users (or user groups).

Using content aggregation to build administration consoles

A system, method, and article of manufacture are disclosed for monitoring and resolving problems detected in the application stack. The application stack may include multiple, interpedently application components which collectively provide a unified service. An interactive problem resolution program may monitor and assist users in troubleshooting an application stack installed on a separate computer system. Generally, when a problem in the application stack is detected, the IPR Program may alert users to the problem and provide information about the problem to guide users in taking steps to correct the problem.

Interactive problem resolution presented within the context of major observable application behaviors

Content from multiple remote/legacy consoles is aggregated within a central console to provide a single point-of-access for managing remote resources. Preferred embodiments deploy the central console as a network-accessible application, and this console application communicates with remotely-located console applications (and/or other locally-executing functions) that carry out tasks selected from the central console by an administrator and then return content generated by those tasks for rendering in the central console. The run-time environment used at the central console is not required to match the run-time environment of the remote/legacy consoles.

Federating legacy/remote content into a central network console

A method for providing context-sensitive help across variable environments. In each of the variable environments, the method can include tokenizing a received network request for help, the tokenization producing a contextually pertinent help file name and a base address of a corresponding help file. Subsequently, the corresponding help file can be located in a fixed storage location referenced by associating the help file name with the base address. Finally, the located help file can be encoded with the base address, and transmitting to a requesting client.

Cross-environment context-sensitive help files

A method of rendering a button in a hypermedia content browser. The method can include decoding a network address received from the content browser to determine encoded characteristics for a button. Once the encoded characteristics for the button have been determined, a button can be dynamically formed based upon the determined characteristics. Once formed, the button can be forwarded to the content browser and the content browser can render the dynamically formed button. The decoding step can include the step of parsing an HTTP request to identify a plurality of parameters which specify display characteristics for the button.

Dynamically rendering a button in a hypermedia content browser

A system and method is provided to display a common display page on a variety of display devices using the item's tab order property to determine the display order. Controls that are displayed on a display device typically have a tab order. When a window that has controls is displayed, the cursor is typically placed at the control with the lowest (i.e., first) tab order. When the user presses the tab key, the cursor moves to the control corresponding to the next lowest tab order. This allows the designer to design a single window (or panel) that is displayed differently on constrained devices. However, even though the window is displayed differently, using tab order mapping maintains a consistent visible proximity between controls despite the type of display device being used by the user.

System and method for tab order mapping of user interfaces

A computer implemented method of matching user descriptions of technical problem manifestations with system problem descriptions in which system-level symptoms for computer-related problems which map to problem descriptions and recommended fixes are broken into sub-phrases, and an index of association ratios between the system-level symptom sub-phrases and sub-phrases derived from text extracted from corpora related to computer problem symptoms is generated and prioritized. When user-entered text related to a computer-related problem is received, it is searched against the prioritized index, and matches are presented for the user in order of prioritization from which the user can select and run a recommended fix to which the selection is mapped.

Method for matching user descriptions of technical problem manifestations with system-level problem descriptions

A system and method is provided to map alternative short captions that are displayed in a constrained display environment instead of displaying standard captions. When designing a display panel, the designer identifies shorter captions to use in a constrained environment. Shorter captions are helpful in preventing text from wrapping or having to horizontally scroll to in order to read a longer caption. Varying levels of short captions are provided so that a standard size display displays the full caption, a somewhat smaller size display displays smaller captions, while an even smaller display displays even smaller captions. National language support is also provide to translate both full captions as well as the short version(s) of the captions.

System and method for using short captions to map user interfaces

A network distributable emulated menu. The menu can include one or more composite images, each image including menu text and a graphical icon, the icon denoting a selectable menu; one or more selectable form-based input elements, each element encapsulating one of the composite images; and a graphical image of a menu structure, the graphical image including at least one form-based input element encapsulating a reference to a composite image of menu text and a graphical icon, the icon denoting at least one of a menu action and a selectable menu. Additionally, the emulated menu can include one or more table cells, each cell containing one of the selectable form-based input elements. Finally, the menu structure can include at least one of a textual menu action, a graphically selectable menu action, and a nested menu structure.

Menu emulation for content browser clients

A graphical user interface (GUI) element rendering method. A GUI element rendering method can include serving a Web page to a Web browser. The Web page can include markup which defines a form and the form can include one or more submittable input elements, each submittable input element having a corresponding key-value pair. The key-value pair can include an identifying key and a value, and one or more of the identifying keys can include a shallow form submit key indicating a request for advanced GUI element processing. One or more of the submitted key-value pairs can be received from the Web browser from among which a shallow form submit key can be identified. In consequence, advanced GUI element processing can be performed based upon values which are associated with the identified shallow form submit key.

Emulating advanced graphical user interface elements in a hypermedia content browser

A variable content rendering system. The system can include one or more programmatic beans configured to render content in particular ones of the presentation environments; a mapping of selected attributes of a markup language to corresponding ones of the configured beans; and, a servlet configured to receive requests for content from individual content browsers in associated presentation environments. Importantly, the servlet can be further configured to retrieve the requested content, to identify individual markup language attributes in the retrieved content, and, based on the mapping, to select individual ones of the programmatic beans to format the retrieved content for presentation in the associated presentation environments.

Growing community of inventors

Cary, NC, United States of America

Elizabeth A Schreiber