Overview
The Advisor is a unique technology
particularly suitable for troubleshooting applications. The
Advisor provides the ideal set of tools for constructing and
deploying decision support systems, including, but not limited
to, the following application areas:
- Call center services
- Process line diagnostics
- Help desk services
- Self-service
- On-line consulting
- Tutoring
The Advisor consists of the following tools
and services:
- Advisor Authoring Service, providing
one of the simplest and most intuitive methods for knowledge
acquisition on the market.
- Advisor Deployment Service, providing
a highly efficient means of reaching the most precise diagnosis
or resolution to a problem in the least number of steps.
- Advisor Validation Service is a
value-added service to provide efficient and robust validation
of Advisor solutions.
All of the tools are available as
stand-alone tools on MS Windows platforms. The deployment service
is also available as a web-based server implemented in a highly
scalable architecture.
In addition, the solutions constructed by
Advisor are adaptive, i.e. they learn as they are being used,
providing the ability to automatically adapt to changing
conditions in the environment and to user feedback. Finally,
Advisor enables users to construct automated problem resolution
systems with a much higher complexity than any competing
technology.
Deployment
The Advisor Deployment Service
provides recommendations based on probabilistic assessments of
uncertainty and on estimates of cost factors associated with
recommended steps.
Some key properties of the Advisor
Deployment Service:
- Advisor finds an optimal sequence
of steps leading to problem resolution, balancing
probabilities and cost factors.
- Advisor is based on Bayesian
network technology, providing the best approach for handling
uncertainty, including missing user input. Other technologies
such as decision trees or rule-based systems basically break
down when the user is unable to answer a question or perform
a recommended action. Hugin Advisor simply tries different
approaches to problem resolution if the user is unwilling or
unable to carry out recommended steps, making it highly
flexible and user-friendly to work with.
- Data collected from the environment
using automated data collectors can be fed into Advisor at
any point in the session. This allows the behavior of Advisor
to be optimized without human interaction. An example of this
could be to fetch the printer control panel message and use
this data to initialize Advisor, potentially saving the user
many steps.
- Advisor solutions can be defined
for use by different audiences, e.g., inexperienced,
customers and experienced customer support personnel. This is
done by creating steps that are only available for certain
users and by assessing cost factors in relation to the level
of skill of the user.
- Users can share Advisor sessions.
This allows scenarios where customers initially use Advisor
for self-help, and then request that their session be taken
over by skilled support personnel. The support agent will be
able to see all of the performed steps, questions and answers
provided by the user, and the most likely cause as determined
by Advisor, avoiding the need to repeat already answered
questions.
- The Advisor Engine is very easily
integrated into other processes. Solutions can be deployed as
interactive (question-answer based sessions with the user),
semi-automated (data is gathered from the environment while
the user answers questions), and fully automated (based on
data gathered from the environment, Advisor performs an
analysis and recommends a resolution action or decides to
gather more data).
- Valuable information is captured in
the historic data log of the various sequences of resolution
steps and other registered data. This historic data will be
made available for reporting purposes such as identifying the
most common problems with a product and their root causes.
Also, historical data provides feedback for product
improvement.
-
The algorithms for calculating the recommended
sequence of problem solving steps are very efficient and
highly scalable, even for very large and complex
problems.
In summary, the Advisor Deployment Service offers the
industry> s best combination of quality, efficiency,
integration capability, flexibility and functionality for
troubleshooting applications.
Knowledge Bases
A Advisor Knowledge Base incorporates
a list of causes (underlying issues or possibilities), actions
(solutions or suggestions), and questions for gathering
additional information. These lists are constructed using the
simple and intuitive user interface of the Advisor Authoring
Service. The causes, actions and questions are then connected
through a specification of probabilities of actions solving
causes and the initial probabilities of causes, etc.
When a Advisor Knowledge Base is
deployed, the Advisor Engine calculates the optimal ordering of
resolution steps, taking into account the probabilities and cost
factors (risk, money, time, etc.) specified. The optimal ordering
of steps is the sequence that has the greatest chance of
resolving the user's issue in the least number of steps. Once
a user is engaged in a Advisor session, the engine will adapt
itself to the answers supplied by the user so that the sequence
is continually optimized to guarantee as swift a resolution as
possible.
Authoring (Knowledge
Acquisition)
The authoring task consists of
entering problem resolution information into the Advisor system.
This information can be entered in familiar terms such as causes,
solutions and questions, and is very simple to learn.
Some key properties of the Advisor
Authoring Service:
- It allows the development of
powerful and flexible troubleshooting solutions after a
training period of only a few hours.
- It provides a highly intuitive and
easy authoring process based on years of development in
collaboration with call center agents.
- It provides a highly efficient
authoring process, optimized to request only the most
absolutely necessary information.
- It allows the construction of the
most complex solutions in the industry.
- It allows the reuse of elements
from other solutions. The Advisor Authoring Service allows
the user to create a large library of reusable solution
elements to ease the construction of new solutions.
In summary, the Advisor Authoring Service
provides the industrys best combination of simple, efficient, and
intuitive development of powerful troubleshooting
solutions.
Validation
The Advisor Validation Service is a
value-added service to provide efficient and robust validation of
Hugin Advisor solutions. This is a patented methodology for
automatically generating thousands of "random" cases
and testing the solution's response to these cases, as
filtered through a virtual user who can make errors, defer steps
or lie.
Adaptive Learning
This service allows Advisor solutions
to be learned and adapted through experience. Historic data
concerning the use of solutions are stored, including the actual
step sequences being employed. This historic data can then be
"fed back" into the solutions, adapting the original
parameters specified by the author to better reflect actual
experiences. This allows the solutions to adjust themselves to
better reflect the "real world" in two ways: by
providing more accurate estimates and by adjusting the estimates
as situations change over time.
System Requirements
The Advisor Authoring Service, the
Advisor Deployment Service and the Advisor Validation Service are
provided for MS Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 and ME.
The Advisor Deployment Service is also
provided for all systems supporting a standard Internet browser
with Java Script.
Download Trial
A free evaluation copy of Advisor
(including the Windows-based stand-alone tools) can be obtained
here .
Consulting
Hugin Expert A/S offers expert
consultancy services in the following areas:
- Identification of optimal use of
Advisor
- Integration of Hugin Advisor into
workflow processes and applications
- Training and assistance in the
development of knowledge bases
Our consultants are skilled programmers
with extensive experience in C, C++ and Java.
Please contact us at
info@hugin.com
for more information about Consulting Services.
Training
Hugin Expert A/S offers training courses on
how to use Advisor for
- Development of knowledge bases
- Validation of knowledge base
consistency, completeness, and correctness
- Integration of knowledge bases with
external data sources
- Deployment of knowledge bases in
the Hugin Advisor Web infrastructure
- Adaptive learning of knowledge
bases
- Analysis of knowledge base
performance from usage reports
Training courses can be held at Hugin
Expert A/S, or at the customer location for an additional
charge.
Please contact us at
info@hugin.com
for more information about Training.
Request Information
For further information about
Advisor, please contact us at
info@hugin.com .
Dezide Advisor
is produced and marketed by
Dezide ApS in
Aalborg, Denmark.
