ART enables a support group (we’ll refer to them as support engineers) and end users to track action requests (ARs) and status reports pertaining to supported projects (or systems). It enables a group of people involved in a particular project to communicate with each other about a set of action items and their status via an Intranet or over the Internet. While this description closely models a help desk, it can be applied to many other business functions. ARs are typically problem reports, enhancement requests, questions or help requests. Support team members (or support engineers) respond to action requests by investigating the request and filing status reports. Solutions to common problems can be logged and made available for searching as well. The system is intended to be relatively small in focus, but flexible, configurable and powerful.

When you log into ART (there’s an authentication process), you see a "hot list" of the open action requests relating to projects in which you’re a member. A graphical image indicates the priority of each action request item. For example, items with the highest priority appear with a blinking red light. The hot list includes some basic information about each AR:

• its tracking number
• who submitted the action request
• when it was submitted
• the support engineer handling the AR
• the type of AR (problem, enhancement or question)
• the support engineer's classification of the problem
• the completion date

See Figure 1.

You can sort the hot list on any of these fields. Each AR also includes a brief (60 character) description or title. You also see the support engineer's responses to the action request as soon as they’re filed. These are called "status reports". They appear below the action request, sorted in reverse chronological order.

Most data items in the hot list are hot linked to detail information. For example, clicking on the AR priority displays a list of all priorities, indicating the current priority. Clicking on a user’s name displays a list of users with access to the current project. Clicking on the AR (or status report) entry presents a detail page which includes all data to which you have access.

Each AR in the hot list has a button for creating a new status report, if you have rights to create a status report. If an AR has a Solution, the AR entry in the hot list will contain a link to the solution.

Your hot list display is quite configurable. If you support multiple projects, you have the ability to indicate how you want your hot list sorted with respect to your projects. You can also specify that different types of ARs or entire projects are to be filtered out of your hot list display. Several other settings enable you to determine when items should no longer appear in your hot list display. Old/completed items can be reviewed through a flexible search engine discussed later in this document.

When action requests are filed, an e-mail notification will always be sent to the support person who has been designated as the "main contact" for the project. The AR can be sent to a specific support person as well and you can optionally "cc" every member of the project who has been configured to receive automatic e-mail notifications.

In addition to the fields already described, action requests include:

• the problem date (as opposed to the date the AR was filed)
• the name of the user reporting the AR (which may differ from the person filing the AR)
• a memo field (required) describing the problem in detail
• a memo field for indicating a specific error message that the user received
• a memo field indicating the data that was being worked on when a problem occurred
• a memo field indicating the part of the application (e.g, screen ID, page name, window title) in which the problem occurred
• a memo field for indicating the activity just prior to the problem’s occurrence
• a field in which an end user can indicate that he or she approves of the resolution to the AR and considers the AR complete

Status report summaries appear at the bottom of each AR form and if a solution has been created for the AR, it appears below the status report summaries. If you have been given the right to create solutions, you can create a solution entry for the AR right from the AR page. Solutions are typically used to summarize steps involved in solving a problem. They can be used to form a knowledge base of solutions to common problems.

ARs can also be filed by e-mail, using a simple form, provided with instructions. This will be extremely handy for users who prefer not to have to log into a web site and fill out forms.

Support engineers are then responsible for filing status reports against the action requests. They can assign their own classifications to each AR. Each status report is assigned a disposition as well. The dispositions are assigned, like the priorities and classifications, from a list stored in a lookup table. The support team has access to a "private" field in each status report, which only other support team members can see. Eventually, a support person indicates that an action request has been completed. E-mails can be generated whenever status reports are filed, whenever action requests are filed and whenever either of the two is edited.

When an AR is being marked as complete, the support person can easily create a solution entry—the form is right on the same screen with the status report form in addition to its location on the AR form.

Like ARs, status reports can also be filed by e-mail, using a simple form, provided with instructions. This will be extremely handy for users who prefer not to have to log into a web site and fill out forms.

A system administrator (SA) creates "customer/company" records. For each "customer/company" that you're supporting, the SA can create different "projects". Or, if you prefer, you can simply run everything under one customer/company. The SA also creates user profiles and associates them with various projects in which they become members. The SA has access to all projects and all user profiles and can assign system administrator privileges to other users.

ART also provides for project administrators, who have system administrator-like capabilities, but only within one project. This is intended to enable the system administrator to offload certain administrative tasks to people involved with a specific project. There are no limitations on the number of system administrators or project administrators that you can create.

Users’ access is limited to the projects in which they are members. (Public users, an exception to this rule, are discussed below.) Included in the typical project are:

• end users
• support team members
• a main support person/contact for a project
• project manager

In the basic version of the system, every user needs to have a user profile record in order to login and use ART. Technically, there aren't any pre-defined "user types" as we believe most organizations will find this approach too confining and inflexible. You can assign any user a variety of privileges (described further below), and these privileges determine what the user can and can’t do when working on projects managed within ART. This makes ART extremely flexible.

If you had to explicitly assign privileges every time you created a new user profile, the system would become rather cumbersome. We have avoided this problem by creating prototypes of the common user profiles. You can use a prototype when building a new user profile and this saves you the effort of having to explicitly assign privileges and other configuration information. Once you’ve created a user profile from a prototype, you have the ability to customize it in any way you see fit.

While we’ve included a few prototypes to get you started, SAs have the ability to modify and remove these prototypes and create their own.

ART includes an optional feature called "Public Users". This feature enables you to create projects that anyone on your network can access—without having a user profile record in advance. This will be ideal if you’re supporting large, enterprise-wide projects that many, many users need access to (e.g., rolling out Windows ’98). When a user who doesn’t have a profile tries to log in, he is prompted to create a basic profile. Once created, he is shown the hot list containing only action requests for projects that have been classified as "public". Actually, he’ll only see action requests (in public projects) that either he personally created, or that have been flagged as public action requests by the project administrator. He can create new action requests in the public projects and he can review any public ARs and status reports in public projects (that were flagged as public or that he created). As with regular projects, only users who have been assigned the privilege are able to respond to public ARs.

Privileges (or rights) are applied either "system wide" or on a project by project basis. System wide privileges include:

• system administrator status
• the ability to not have to authenticate each time you enter ART

Project specific privileges indicate:

• Does the user support the project? Support people get access to certain fields that others do not.
• Does the user get sent e-mail when a new action request is posted against a project?
• Is the user the main contact for the project? If so, she or he automatically gets sent e-mail when ARs or status reports are created or edited.
• Is the user an administrator of the project? This enables him/her to create/maintain other user profiles in the project
• Can the user create action requests in the project?
• Can the user review action requests in the project?
• Can the user respond to problem reports in the project?
• Can the user edit existing problem reports in the project?
• Can the user search through old/complete action requests?
• Can the user approve completion of an action request?
• Can the user view solutions?
• Can the user create/modify solutions?

ART enables users to submit action requests and status reports by using some easy to use e-mail forms. Users are sent a confirmation when their e-mail has been entered into the database. Error messages are sent back if the e-mail they sent was invalid or couldn't be parsed properly. In the e-mail forms, users can indicate whether other people are to get copied on the new entry into the database.

There is a flexible searching front end (see Figure 4) that enables you to search on a variety of fields and produce two types of output. Search fields include:

• one or more projects to which you have access
• range or action request numbers
• range or entry dates
• range of completion dates
• AR creator
• one or more support engineers
• one or all types of ARs, AR priorities or AR classifications
• free text search on the problem title field, problem description
• free text search on status report description
• dispositions of ARs (status reports)
• status report creator
• free text search of private notes in status reports
• free text search of solution descriptions, steps, private notes, keywords
• solution creator

Output can be in one of two formats. The hot list display format enables you to link to AR, status report and solution detail. The printout format presents ARs and status reports so that they are suitable for printing.

ART enables you to build reports that provide a number of basic statistics—like counts. For almost every statistic, ART’s flexible report generator enables you to build cross-tabs against other statistics. For example, you can produce cross-tabs to answer questions like "How many ARs were serviced by individual support person based on the AR’s priority?" and "What is the average duration to complete ARs based on priority and project?" While the mechanisms for building the statistical reports have been completed, we are developing a solution that will provide output for certain statistics in graphical format.

At this time, we anticipate creating an "Install Shield" installation program that will copy all of the ColdFusion scripts to your web server’s hard drive. Customers must already have ColdFusion or must purchase it in addition to ART. A separate configuration utility will be used to configure ART with some basic information such as the names of your POP and SMTP servers (required to support ART’s email functions). We anticipate providing consulting services to assist customers with the installation and configuration of ART. We will be able to provide training services as well.

ART is a web/data-based action request tracking / help desk system which employs open Internet technologies like SMTP and POP3 to enable users to keep track of and resolve problems and other action requests. It was built using Adobe's (www.adobe.com) ColdFusion Application Server v3.1 in the NT 4.0 environment. We currently are running against an MS Access back end using straight ANSI 92 SQL. It can be upgraded to run against any ODBC database (e.g, MS-SQL Server, Oracle, dBase, etc).

ART requires: