Patent ID: 7380171

Claim:
In a failure data management server connected to one or more clients and to one or more support providers, the one or more support providers receiving error reports containing failure data from the one or more clients and the one or more failure data management servers to use in determining one or more fixes for one or more failures occurring at the one or more clients, a method of controlling failure data reporting, the method comprising acts of: receiving user input that defines one or more transmission filter rules to be met when sending an error report to a support provider; receiving user input that defines one or more collection filter rules to be met when including failure data within an error report; receiving one or more error reports corresponding to one or more failures at one or more clients; filtering the one or more received error reports with the one or more transmission filter rules to determine which of the one or more received error reports to send to the support provider; filtering each error report to be sent to the support provider to remove any failure data that fails to satisfy the one or more collection filter rules; and sending each error report that satisfies the one or more transmission filter rules, with failure data that satisfies the one or more collection filter rules, to the support provider for analysis.