Patent ID: 7281170

Claim:
A help desk system for providing help desk support in connection with a network, said help desk system constructed and arranged to automatically initiate an investigation of a network resource in response to receipt of a help desk submission and to automatically provide to a network user a result of said investigation, said help desk system comprising: a user interaction module constructed and arranged to receive said help desk submission from any network user, a portion of said help desk submission associated with a network resource, and in response to receipt of said help desk submission to automatically initiate an investigation request to investigate a condition of said network resource; and a fault diagnosis interaction module constructed and arranged to interface with said user interaction module to receive said investigation request therefrom, said fault diagnosis interaction module comprising: an interface mechanism responsive to said investigation request to automatically send a fault diagnosis request to initiate said investigation of said condition of said network resource with a fault diagnosis system, said interface mechanism to receive a result of said fault diagnosis request from said fault diagnosis system and said interface mechanism responsive to said receipt of said result to automatically identify network users affected by said result and to automatically send an unsolicited message describing the result of said investigation to the identified network users.