Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

Philip Andrew Flocken

Swamy Jagannadha Mandavilli

William Brothers

Noreen K Lee

Travis Scott Tripp

Yassine Faihe

Jay Shaughnessy

Joshua D Hawkins

Embodiments of the invention relate to techniques for collecting information. In an embodiment, a support engineer for a vendor, when desiring information to be collected at a customer site, creates an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file that includes collection instructions. The support engineer then sends the XML file to the customer who, upon receiving the XML file, posts the XML file to a collection system. The collection system having the XML file as an input invokes the collection software that executes the collection instructions included in the XML file, and generates the information desired by the support engineer. The collection system, via a pre-setup transport mechanism, then transfers the collected information to a system accessible to the support engineer on the vendor's site.

Collecting information at a remote site

Customer support personnel can access via a vendor's portal an automated support vendor website to view the status of a fault incident that is being handled by the vendor's automated support system. In an illustrated embodiment, the customer can actually alter the status of the fault incident while it is being handled on the vendor's site.

Computer support network with customer portal to monitor incident-handling status by vendor's computer service system

Primary and secondary support vendorsandprovide support for an applicationrunning on a customer computer system. Diagnostic softwarerunning on the customer computer system gathers diagnostic data, which is transmitted to the primary-support vendor's computer system. There, the diagnostic data is analyzed to determine whether the help of the secondary support vendor is required. If so, the diagnostic data is repackaged for transmission to the secondary support vendor. The results of the secondary analysis are returned to the primary support vendor's computer system and used to generate a proposed solution, which is made available to the customer

Tiered multi-source software support using automated diagnostic-data transfers

A method of and system for troubleshooting a first computer system using a second computer system having a processor and a memory storing an electronic document including troubleshooting information and storing a set of troubleshooting commands for execution by the first computer system is described. The troubleshooting command set is related to the troubleshooting information contained in the electronic document. A method of generating an electronic document including troubleshooting information and a set of troubleshooting commands for execution by a first computer system is also described.

Remote software support agent system with electronic documents for troubleshooting

A method and system for maintaining persistence of graphical markups created within a collaboration environment that associates graphical markups with the camera position is presented. The collaboration tool provides utilities to allow saving the graphical markups to the user's local disk, saving the graphical markups into a PDM system (either locally or remotely), and saving the entire collaboration session including graphical markups, notes, action items, etc., When saved to persistent storage, all the camera positions and all graphical markups associated with them are stored in the markup file. The saved markups/session can later be reloaded from the user's local disk or a PDM system as appropriate. When a session is loaded into the collaboration session, all of the camera positions and associated graphical markups from the saved session are then accessible, allowing simple viewing of the results of the session, continuation-of-work, or asynchronous collaboration. After a markup file is loaded the contents are accessible to all the members of the current collaboration session.

Method and system for maintaining persistence of graphical markups in a collaborative graphical viewing system

A method and system for maintaining persistence of graphical markups created within a collaboration environment that associates graphical markups with the camera position is presented. The collaboration tool provides utilities to allow saving the graphical markups to the user's local disk, saving the graphical markups into a PDM system (either locally or remotely), and saving the entire collaboration session including graphical markups, notes, action items, etc. When saved to persistent storage, all the camera positions and all graphical markups associated with them are stored in the markup file. The saved markups/session can later be reloaded from the user's local disk or a PDM system as appropriate. When a session is loaded into the collaboration session, all of the camera positions and associated graphical markups from the saved session are then accessible, allowing simple viewing of the results of the session, continuation-of-work, or asynchronous collaboration. After a markup file is loaded the contents are accessible to all the members of the current collaboration session.

Growing community of inventors

Denver, CO, United States of America

Philip Andrew Flocken