Patent ID: 9176686
Filing Date: 2015-11-03
Classification: G06F,H04N

Abstract:
1. A management system including an image forming apparatus and a management server that communicates with the image forming apparatus via a network, the image forming apparatus comprising: a monitoring unit configured to monitor a failure; a detection unit configured to detect addition of a function that uses a service provided by a function providing apparatus, which is different from the management server, by communicating with the function providing apparatus via the network, wherein the function is added to the image forming apparatus according to upgrading of firmware of the image forming apparatus or addition of an application to the image forming apparatus; an added function transmission unit configured to transmit, in response to the addition of the function detected by the detection unit, to the management server information on the added function; a monitoring condition receiving unit configured to receive a monitoring condition, corresponding to the added function, returned from the management server; a setting unit configured to set the monitoring condition received by the monitoring condition receiving unit to be added to a monitoring condition of the monitoring unit; a result receiving unit configured to receive a processing result of the service used by the added function from the function providing apparatus; a generation unit configured to generate, when the monitoring unit has detected an occurrence of a failure corresponding to the monitoring condition and the failure is attributable to the function providing apparatus, failure information by which it is identified that the detected failure is attributable to the function providing apparatus, and to generate, when it is not identified that the failure is attributable to the function providing apparatus, failure information on the failure detected by the monitoring unit; and a transmission unit configured to transmit to the management server the failure information generated by the generation unit, wherein the generation unit generates, as failure information by which it is identified that the detected failure is attributable to the function providing apparatus, failure information including a failure code having been notified by the function providing apparatus when the added function is used, and the management server comprising: an added function receiving unit configured to receive information on the added function from the image forming apparatus; a monitoring condition transmission unit configured to transmit to the image forming apparatus a monitoring condition corresponding to the information on the added function received by the added function receiving unit; a receiving unit configured to receive failure information from the image forming apparatus; and a notification unit configured to issue a notification for arranging maintenance of the image forming apparatus according to the failure information received from the image forming apparatus, wherein the management server identifies that the failure is attributable to the function providing apparatus based on the received failure information.