From: soppe@pttrnl.nl (Soppe M.)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.shells
Subject: Summary diagnosis/helpdesk shell
Date: 6 Apr 92 10:04:07 GMT
Organization: PTT Research



Dear Netters,

I promised to send a summary of answers to the question on diagnosis/helpdesk
shells I put to you some weeks ago. I was very
pleased to receive this many relevant reactions to my question.
Thanks a lot to the contributers. The summary below contains the relevant
parts of the mail I received. 

Best regards,

Margareth Soppe
M.M.Soppe@research.ptt.nl

*********************************************************************


From: "Buchanan, Jim" <ACAD8005@RyeVm.Ryerson.Ca>

I saw your query on helpdesk software and thought you may be interested in
the product we are currently beta testing.  It is from a company call
AICorp, based in Waltham Mass. U.S.A. (they do have a European office but
I don't have the info here..)  The helpdesk shell runs on their expert
system tool, KBMS (On an OS/2 platform) It will do all of the things that
you are looking for (with some extensions) and easily interfaces to other
data... to write (on your own) the kind of system you are looking at would
be a fairly lengthy process..  If you are interested in more information
please feel free to write back.  I only log on this system about once a
week so may take a while to get back to you..

*********************************************************************



From: David Saslav <SASLAV@INTELLICORP.COM>


	My company, IntelliCorp, builds a Windows-based development
	and delivery environment for building applications exactly
	like the one you describe.  It is called KAPPA-PC.  We have
	already established a track record within one West Coast
	telecommunications organization with a successfully deployed
	"initial diagnostic"-style application built on top of 
	KAPPA-PC in Windows.

	-- David Saslav
	   Technical Sales Support Engineer


*********************************************************************


From: KENYON@cgi.com

The company I work for (Carnegie Group, Inc.) has been developing a shell
of this type for the past few years in work with U S WEST.  The diagnostic
technology used is our TestBench diagnostic expert system shell, and the
resulting expert system is embedded in an application which also handles
trouble ticketing and reference functions.  The tool is currently in use by
ladies (and most of them are ladies :-) at several U S WEST help desks.

A paper on our application will be presented at IAAI-92 (Innovative
Applications for Artificial Intelligence) in San Jose this July.

Jeff Kenyon
Senior Engineer, 
Carnegie Group, Inc.

*********************************************************************


From: aterry@Teknowledge.COM (Allan Terry)

  Enterprise/Dx is a diagnosis-specific shell that is marketed for high-tech
service applications (although there is no reason that can't solve other
diagnostic problems as well).  You will find that it has a "family
resemblance" to the DSS shell in that both offer a failure-test-repair model
of diagnosis.  If you think your problem is "small" in term of reasoning,
there are hundreds of expert system and help desk shells out there.  If you
have a more difficult problem in terms of size or complexity that needs an
industrial-strength solution, shells like Enterprise/Dx or DSS will be just
right for you.  It will probably be cheaper for you to use some shell than
to build something from scratch and them maintain it.

						Allan Terry

internet: aterry@teknowledge.com
uucp:	  {uunet|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|uw-beaver}!aterry%teknowledge.com
hardcopy: Cimflex Teknowledge Corp., 1810 Embarcadero Rd, Palo Alto, CA 94303
Old Russian proverb: "He who invokes the law grasps a wolf by the ears"


*********************************************************************


From: Imogen Holbrook <imogen@harlqn.co.UK>

Harlequin have a range of development tools that would be ideal for
your project, if you send me a postal address I will send you
information about how we could help.


Imogen Holbrook
Sales Coordinator

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Imogen Holbrook,                 Internet:   imogen@harlqn.co.uk        |
|     Harlequin Limited,                 JANET:     imogen@uk.co.harlqn       |
|     Barrington Hall,                   UUCP:      mcvax!ukc!harlqn!imogen   |
|     Barrington,                        Tel:        +44 223 872522           |
|     Cambridge CB2 5RG, UK	         Fax:        +44 223 872519           |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+


*********************************************************************


From:	munk@prl.philips.NL


In my (our) opinion, DSS is a good shell for your application: it is meant for
shallow reasoning applications, it has the capability for displaying pictures,
and it is not in the hands of Philips anymore. It is backed by a small company
of approx. 7 people in the States, former Philips Research Briarcliff employees.

Building it yourself in SmallTalk does not sound as a very good idea to me (us):
you'll have to do a lot of work yourself which a shell offers you.

Another possibility is RAL (Rule extended Algorithmic Language), an extension
of C with rules etc. The same arguments as for SmallTalk hold, however, extended
with the fact that you have to use a cryptic language as a glue.

BTW, British Telecom has a system that sounds just like your application:
it is shown in EuroPace course LPP-1.

Harm Munk.
 
+----------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
| Harm Munk                              | Building WAY 11                    |
| Philips Research Laboratories          | P.O. Box 80 000                    |
| Knowledge Based Systems                | 5600 JA  Eindhoven                 |
|                                        | The Netherlands                    |
| #include <standard.disclaimer>         | tel. +31 40 74 46 59               |
|                                        | email: munk@prl.philips.nl         |
+----------------------------------------+------------------------------------+


*********************************************************************


From:	sticklen@cps.msu.edu

  In our lab we follow in general the Task Specific viewpoint of expert
systems. More particularly, we do most of our work in the framework of
generic tasks (originated by Chandrasekaran et al at Ohio State). We have a
prototype tool that is appropriate for diagnostic problem solving that is
patterned after CSRL [Bylander, Tom and Sanjay Mittal. "CSRL: A Language
for Classificatory Problem Solving and Uncertainty Handling." AI Magazine 7
(3 1985): 66-77] that is written in ParcPlace Smalltalk. We have a version
of it running now, but will have a new generation by August that will
include an interface in Tigre.


  ---jon---


------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Sticklen                                   tele: +517-353-3711
AI/KBS Lab - Comp Sci Dept                     FAX:  +517-336-1061
A714 Wells Hall                            office in A392 Eng Bldg
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI  48824-1027         home telephone: +517-337-5690


*********************************************************************


From:	m-reed@urdu.cs.columbia.edu

Well,  it  sounds like  what you are  looking for is an  expert system
shell that allows you  to attach it  to various  other  parts  of your
infrastructure, such as Email, billing, records, etc.

There  are a couple of  Systems   out there that   allow this kind  of
connectivity.  DSS is very good  (although I'm partial  since I was on
the team that developed it  at Philips Labs).   It allows a great deal
of connectivity, with the drawback that it becomes a little unwieldly,
and wasn't quite as "clean" as  a system  usually  has to be before it
can be distributed in the environment you are discussing.  It was also
quite expensive, at least at the time I was involved there, and tended
to require lots  of machine resource.   Depending on how you are going
to deliver the system, this may not be a problem, since DSS  allows PC
delivery (and by now may offer PC development too.)

One system you might look into is Nexpert Object  by  Neuron Data.  It
is C based,  and has a very   clean interface.   It  is not,  however,
dedicated to the diagnosis field,  which  may or may not  be a serious
problem for you.   Neuron Data  may  have  a more  Disagnosis-specific
shell out by now.

Carnegie Group (if  they are still  around)  has Test Bench, which was
(in  1990)  very similar to  DSS. (Some  might say  TOO similar!) This
system cost even more than DSS though.

SInce I  have not been in the  field for almost  2 years,  a lot could
have changed.    The best advice  I  could  give is  to  go find  some
companies  that have done  the same thing and   talk to someone  about
their  experiences (as a  manager or whatever).   The  companies  that
develop these systems  never have a really  sound  idea of what causes
problems, especially when they are trying to  make a sale!   There are
some case studies around also.   Try looking in IEEE Expert  magazine,
which is pretty  objective and is likely  to  give a few case  studies
each year.

Michael


*********************************************************************


From:	kgerman@uswest.com

Well, I almost thought your post was from someone in our group,
since we are doing a very similar (almost identical) application.

I'm leading the expert system effort of the project and would be
happy to chat more on the subject, if you are interested.

Just a few quick notes:

We are using Nexpert Object to build the expert system, but any
backward-chaining shell would work pretty well.  Nexpert Object
is large, complex, powerful, and very expensive.  We have been
able to get a working prototype together in a few days.

The core of our application is a presentation manager to our
large mainframe ticketing systems.  We are developing on HP
workstations and will deploy on some brand of X terminal.
The user interface is OSF/Motif and we are using Sybase for
some local ticketing.

Sorry, I'm out of time, but I'd be very interested to hear more
about your project.

- Karyn


*********************************************************************


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