Abstract: An autonomous expert system for directly maintaining remote computer systems by directly accessing the remote computer systems, diagnosing, and clearing fault conditions on those computer systems. The expert system performs those functions by first accessing a fault report from a centralized service reporting center, establishing a data connection to the computer system reporting the fault, invoking diagnostic routines on the computer system to gather data about the reported fault, analyzing the data, and, if appropriate, clearing the reported fault from the computer system. If the fault cannot be cleared, the expert system recommends maintenance procedures and replacement parts for a technician who the expert system dispatches to the remote computer. The recommendations are based on field experience stored in rules and databases maintained by the expert system.

Abstract: This integrated message service system provides a user with an indication of which of a plurality of message service systems contain unretrieved messages. This is accomplished by the serving telephone switching system maintaining a translation memory that indicates both the type of message services assigned to each user and the location of unretrieved messages in the assigned message services. The translation memory is updated every time a user creates a new message or accesses a previously stored message.

Abstract: This integrated message service system provides a user both with an indication of which of a plurality of message service systems contain unretrieved messages and access to these unretrieved messages. This is accomplished by the serving telephone switching system maintaining a translation memory that indicates both the type of message services assigned to each user and the location of unretrieved messages in the assigned message services. The translation memory is updated every time a user creates a new message or accesses a previously stored message. The serving telephone switching system forwards all unretrieved messages from all the message service systems to a user when the user has accessed any one of the message service systems. This eliminates the need for a user to access all assigned message service systems to retrieve messages.