WEB-BASED NETWORK MONITORING TOOL
A monitoring tool for use with one or more automatic call distributors (ACD) which automatically and continuously polls or queries the ACDs to monitor not only alarm conditions but other conditions, such as agent staffing levels, call answering time, call routing and traffic conditions. Such continuous and automatic monitoring and querying of the ACD in accordance with the present invention is thus able to improve the overall efficiency of such ACDs by improving the service response time of such ACDs. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, the status records of the ACDs maybe directed to a website, for example, on an enterprise Intranet website to enable any of the company representatives with access rights to access the performance of the ACD network from any location. Other data, such as the trunk inventory record keeping system (TIRKS) may also be displayed on the website to facilitate troubleshooting of alarm conditions. Another aspect of the invention is the ability to provide automatic paging for predetermined alarm status condition.
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1. Field of the Invention:
The present invention relates to a monitoring tool for use in a telecommunications system which automatically monitors one or more automatic call distributors (ACD) and provides an indication of the status of such ACDs in essentially real time.
2. Description of the Prior Art:
Automatic call distributors (ACD) are known in the art. Such ACDs are telecommunications devices, used by various manufactures and service providers, to handle a relatively huge volume of calls and distribute them among a relatively few agents. Such ACDs are known to be networked and interconnected with interactive voice response units (IVR). As such, calls to a company's customer service telephone are provided with menu options by the IVR depending on the type of service required. The caller's selection is then used to route the call to the appropriate ACD in the network. One or more agent groups are normally affiliated with each of the ACDs in the network. The call is routed to an agent group and held until one of the agents is available to take the call. The calls are normally distributed to the agents according to various criteria. For example, the call may be routed to the agent in the agent group that has been idle the longest. Alternatively, the call may be routed to the agent based on the caller's telephone number or the number dialed by the caller. If all of the agents are busy, the call may be held in queue or routed to another agent group, for example, for a predetermined time period or the caller may be requested to leave a voice mail message for later call back.
Such ACDs are known to be provided by a number of manufacturers. For example, Lucent Technologies, Rockwell, Toshiba and STE are all known manufacturers of ACDs. An important aspect of such ACDs is the efficiency by which the incoming service calls are handled. As such, all of the providers of such ACDs are known to provide online monitoring of the ACDs. Unfortunately, such systems are monitored manually on a query basis. In other words, service technicians must manually query or poll each of the ACDs to determine its status, which can be time consuming. Once an alarm condition is detected, a service technician is subsequently dispatched to correct the problem. Unfortunately, with such a system, an ACD can be out of service for several hours and perhaps days depending on the location of the service technician relative to the ACD and the severity of the problem. While such ACDs are out of service, the call answering time potentially increases, perhaps leading many customer calls unanswered, potentially causing customer ill will toward the company and increased call traffic when the ACD is returned to service. Thus, there is a need for a monitoring system which lowers the response time and provides continuous and automatic monitoring of the various conditions in order to reduce the amount of time such ACDs are out of service.
Various objects and advantages of the present invention will be realized upon consideration of the following specification and attached drawing wherein:
The present invention relates to a monitoring tool for use with one or more automatic call distributors (ACD) which automatically and continuously polls or queries the ACDs to monitor not only alarm conditions but other conditions, such as agent staffing levels, call answering time, call routing and traffic conditions. Such continuous and automatic querying of the ACD in accordance with the present invention is thus able to improve the overall efficiency of such ACDs by improving the service response time of such ACDs. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, the status of the ACDs may be directed to a website, for example, on an enterprise Intranet website to enable any of the company representatives with access rights to access the real time performance of the ACD network from any location. Another aspect of the invention is the ability to provide automatic paging for predetermined alarm status condition.
Although the present invention is illustrated and described relative to Lucent Definity G3R ACDs, the principles of the present invention are applicable to virtually any ACD or other telecommunications equipment which stores status data.
An exemplary block diagram illustrating the inbound and outbound trunks for an exemplary network of ACDs is illustrated in
Each ACD 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 may include two inbound trunk groups and two outbound trunk groups. For example, the ACD 22 may include two inbound trunk groups 34 and 36 from independent long distance carrier switches 38 and 40. In order to improve the inbound reliability of the system, calls placed to a central office 42 may be routed to two different access tandems 44 and 46 by way of a plurality of trunks 48 and 50. The access tandems 44 and 46 may also be tied together by way of intermachine trunks (IMT) 52. Separate trunk groups 54, 56, 58 and 59 from each of the access tandems 44 and 46 are applied to each of the long distance carrier switches 38 and 40. In particular, each access tandem is connected to both of the long distance carrier switches 38 and 40 by way of a plurality of trunk groups 54 and 56. Similarly, the access tandem 46 may be connected to the long distance carrier switches 38 and 40 by way of a plurality of trunk groups 56 and 58. With such a configuration, should one of the access tandems 44 or 48 fail, calls can be routed through the other access tandem since both access tandems feed each of the long distance carrier switches 38 and 40; and the access tandems 44 and 46 are tied together by way of the IMT 52. The exemplary in bound distribution system may also be configured to minimize service loss upon failure of one of the long distance carrier switches 38 and 40. In particular, as mentioned above, each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 has two incoming trunk groups 34 and 36; one from each of the long distance carrier switches 38 and 40 respectively. Thus, should one of the long distance carrier switches 38, 40 fail, calls can be routed to the appropriate ACD 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 by the other long distance carrier switch. Similarly, should problems develop with one of the trunk inbound trunk groups 34 or 36, calls to the ACD can be re-routed by way of the other trunk groups to provide improved overall reliability of the system.
Each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 may also provided with, for example, two outgoing trunk groups. For example, the ACD 22 may be provided with the outgoing trunk groups 58 and 60. These outbound trunk groups enable outbound calls from the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 to be directed to central offices (not shown). In order to provide reliability of outgoing calls from each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32, each of the outgoing trunk groups 58 and 60 are directed to a separate central office (not shown).
As discussed above, each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 is fed with two incoming trunk groups 34 and 36 (
Initially the call is routed to an interactive voice response unit 106, for example, an IBM Direct Talk 6000, where the caller may be given various voice menu options in which the customer is directed to respond by way of the touch-tone telephone 102. In addition, the customer may be required to key in a telephone number. The information input by the customer is then looked up on a database, such as an Ameritech Customer Information System (ACIS) data base 106 containing customer records. The customer record information may then be provided to a server 108, used to provide the information back to the ACD 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 and display the information on the screen of the next available agent. The call and the above-mentioned information are then routed to an appropriate CCC 68. In particular, the calls are routed to an EPN 108, which, in turn, routes the calls to the next available agent. Each agent is provided with a work station 112. All the work stations may be connected together in a network, for example a token ring network. The customer records may then be “screen popped” onto the agents work stations 112, when the agent picks up the call.
Other options may be provided with the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32. For example, a predictive dialer 116 may be provided and connected to the ACD 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32. The predictive dialer, 116 may be used for automatic dialing for various purposes, such as collections. As shown in
As mentioned above, each ACD 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 may be used to route calls to one or more EPNs 108 (
In order to solve this problem, the present invention automatically and continuously polls or queries each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 on a periodic basis, for example every two minutes, and provides the status of the ACDs. The system may also be used to monitor the load balance on each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 as well as various other attributes of the system, for example, the call traffic to each of the agents, and the average amount of wait time per call. This information may then be transferred, for example, over a secure line, for example, to a corporate Intranet, and displayed by way of a conventional web browser. As known in the art, such corporate Intranet networks are normally protected by a corporate fire wall, which only enables authorized users to access the corporate Intranet. As such, anyone with access rights to the corporate Intranet can access the ACD status information over the Internet from virtually anywhere in the world. By providing automatic and continuous polling of the ACDs, the status of ACDs can be detected and adjustments made to correct problems before they happen.
Exemplary web pages in accordance with the present invention, adapted to be displayed by way of a conventional web browser, such as the Internet Explorer and Netscape, are illustrated in
The traffic load data box 132 is adapted to provide the traffic load of a particular ACD and in particular the traffic load of all of the various trunks connected to the ACD including inbound, outbound and intermachine trunks as well as information on the EPNs and other devices connected to the ACD, such as an IVR. The traffic load data box 132 may be provided with five columns 138, 140, 142, 144 and 146. Column 138 relates to the trunk group connected to the particular ACD. In particular, as mentioned above, each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28 and 30 is fed from inbound trunks from the long distance carrier switches 38 and 40 (
In accordance with an important aspect of the invention, traffic load information for all the inbound and outbound trunks to the ACD as well as to the IVR may be displayed graphically in column 146, for example, in the form of a bar graph. For example, as shown in
In one embodiment of the invention, different colors may be used to provide quick visual indication of the occupancy rate. For example, the color green may be used to display occupancy rates up to 80% while a different color such as yellow may be used to display occupancy rates, for example, greater than 80%. In this way, the load balance of all trunk groups connected to each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32 can be quickly checked at a glance by just monitoring column 146 and noting the specific color used for the bar graph.
In addition, to the trunk groups connected to the various ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32, the traffic load data block 130 may also be used to provide access to associated equipment, such as EPNs and CQC (contact quality center). As will be discussed in more detail below, each of the entries in column 138 of the traffic load data box 130 may be hyperlinked to successive web pages which provide more detailed information. For example,
Each of the data boxes 150-160 may be provided with a plurality of columns. The first column 162 may be used to represent the trunk group number (TGN). The second column may be used to represent office equipment (OE). The third column may be used to provide the circuit identification numbers and may be hyperlinked to local assignment information for each circuit, for example, as illustrated in
An important aspect of one embodiment of the invention relates to the integration of other data, which may be other dynamic data not retrieved from the ACD, or static data, such as the local circuit assignments and records. In particular, the trunk inventory record keeping system (TIRKS) data as illustrated in
Returning to the ACD home page illustrated in
As mentioned above, the ACD home page 130 may also be provided with a “current system status” data box 136 which gives different types of useful information regarding the call traffic on the system, as well as other useful information regarding the system. For example, the current system status data box 136, as shown, indicates that there are 233 agents active and that there are 68 calls in the queue and the longest call has been in the queue for 10 minutes, 12 seconds. The current system status box 136 may contain a hyperlink to an agent status web page, for example, as generally shown in
As mentioned above, the ACD home page 130, in addition to providing an information relating to the trunks connected to a particular ACD 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32, may also be used to provide information regarding equipment connected to the ACDs, such as EPNs. As mentioned above, one or more customer care centers (CCC) may be connected to each of the ACDs 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and 32. Each of the CCCs may be formed from one or more EPNs, which distribute the calls to the various agents at a particular location. As such, the EPNs associated with an ACD may be hyperlinked to an EPN web page, such as illustrated in
A load balance page is illustrated in
As mentioned above, the present invention continuously and automatically polls the ACDs over a dial up connection, captures data stored relative to the ACDs and processes this data, for example, to generate the exemplary web pages illustrated in
Appendices 1 through 5 relate to the C+ files for processing the data retrieved from the various ACDs. In particular, Appendix 1, entitled “mic1.cfg” is a configuration file for the ACD 28, “Michigan-1”. This file, “mic1.cfg”, identifies all of the equipment connected to the ACD 28, “Michigan-1”. For example, with reference to Appendix 1, the file identifies the various inbound trunks from the long distance carriers 38 and 40 (
Appendix 2, entitled “mic1.eqp”, is an equipment file of all the various equipment connected to the ACD 28; (
Appendix 3 relates to a trunk file for the ACD 28 (
Appendix 4, entitled “mic1.gat”, relates to the agent's skill level for the ACD 28 (
Appendix 5, entitled “mic1.pn” is a load balance file. This file is used to provide the load balance web page as illustrated in
Referring to
In order to provide some level of reliability of the data transmitted from the ACD, the system may periodically check the carrier connection as illustrated in steps 216, 218, 220, 222 and 224. Anytime a carrier failure is detected, the system proceeds to step 208 and generates a carrier failure indication.
Assuming that the system is connected, the status health of the selected ACD is transmitted in 226, after the system checks to see if it is still connected to the carrier in step 218. The system retrieves the trunk group load traffic data in step 228. After again checking the connection of the carrier in step 220, the system retrieves the agent status data in step 230.
In step 232, the system retrieves the IVR port status after checking the connection of the carrier in step 222. Subsequently, in step 234 the system retrieves all login data and terminates the data capture from the ACD in step 236.
If any alarms have been detected, the system may be configured to transmit the alarm information to a paging platform, for example, as illustrated in
As indicated above, the system may be provided with the ability to provide major and minor alarm status to a paging platform. The software for transmitting the major and minor alarm information to a paging platform, for example, Procomm Plus, as illustrated in
The software for processing the data captured from the ACDs is illustrated in
If the data is not system health status, the system next determines in 272 whether the data is related to alarm information. If so, the system proceeds to step 282 and processes the alarm information in accordance with
All of the data processing algorithms illustrated in
As mentioned above, the system is adapted to provide an alarm log for each ACD. An exemplary alarm log is illustrated in
The software for processing the data captured from the ACD is illustrated in
Alarm information is processed as illustrated in
A sub-system for processing hunt group information is illustrated in
Login information may be processed as illustrated in
The system for processing load balance information is illustrated in
As mentioned above, the system may be used to generate an alarm log, for example as illustrated in
Exemplary HTML code for the web pages illustrated in
It should be appreciated that a wide range of changes and modifications may be made to the embodiment of the invention as described herein. Thus, it is intended that the foregoing detailed descriptions be regarded as illustrative rather than limiting and that the following claims, including all equivalents, are intended to define the scope of the invention.
Claims
1. A system for automatically monitoring the status of one or more automatic call distributors (ACD), the system comprising:
- means for automatically establishing a communication link with said one or more ACDs; and
- means for automatically retrieving data from ACDs.
2. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein said establishing means includes means for automatically connecting to said ACD.
3. The system as recited in claim 2, wherein said establishing means includes means for automatically logging into said ACD.
4. The system as recited in claim 2, further including means for processing the data retrieved from said one or more ACDs defining processed data.
5. The system as recited in claim 4, further including means for generating one or more web pages containing data retrieved from said one or more ACDs.
6. The system as recited in claim 5, further including means for generating one or more HTML files of processed data for presentation on a web page.
7. The system as recited in claim 6, further including means for generating one or more HTML files of retrieved data for presentation on a web page.
8. The system as recited in claim 1, further including means for transmitting portions of said retrieved data to a pager platform.
9. A method for providing status information of one or more call distributors (ACD) comprising the steps of:
- (a) automatically and continuously retrieving data from said one or more ACDs;
- (b) displaying portions of said retrieved data on one or more first web pages.
10. The method as recited in claim 9, wherein step (a) includes the steps of:
- (c) automatically connecting to said one or more ACDs;
- (d) automatically logging into said one or more ACDs;
- (e) retrieving data from said one or more ACDs.
11. A method for providing status information of one or more call distributors (ACD) comprising the steps of:
- (a) automatically and continuously retrieving data from said one or more ACDs;
- (b) providing portions of said retrieved data to a paging platform.
12. The method as recited in claim 9, wherein step (a) includes the steps of:
- (c) automatically connecting to said one or more ACDs;
- (d) automatically logging into said one or more ACDs;
- (e) retrieving data from said one or more ACDs.
13. The method as recited in claim 9, further including the steps of:
- (c) providing other data not retrieved from the ACDs;
- (d) displaying said other data on one or more second web pages.
14. The method as recited in claim 12, wherein said second web pages are hyperlinked to said first web page.
15. The method as recited in claim 12, wherein said other data is static data.
16. The method as recited in claim 14, wherein said static data is trunk inventory record keeping system (TIRKS) data.
Type: Application
Filed: Oct 20, 2010
Publication Date: Feb 10, 2011
Applicant: AT&T INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY I, L.P. (Reno, NV)
Inventors: Douglas Alan Hahn (Chicago, IL), Bruce Lee Leatherman (Lemont, IL)
Application Number: 12/908,604
International Classification: H04M 3/00 (20060101); G06F 17/00 (20060101);