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Remoter: an Operational Knowledge ManagementSystem for telecommunication operators

Giulio Valente 1and Alessandro Rigallo 2

Abstract. This paper describes an Operational Knowledge Man-

agement System (OKMS) called Remoter. This OKMS has been

used in a telecommunication context, to support the Telecom Italias

technicians during their day-to-day activities. Remoter integrates

multiple technologies to support telecommunication operators who

need operational-knowledge to perform their activities. The oper-

ational knowledge (OK) could be defined as a set of procedures

or norms used by telecommunication operators to construct a gen-

uine strategy tailored to the peculiarities of a given situation. Due

to the approach followed, Remoter could be used in several differ-

ent Telecommunication contexts. In particular, it has been used andtested in the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) context,

where operators have to rapidly react and reach the best decision.

The aim of Remoter is to enable ADSL technicians to share, capture

and apply their collective OK to take optimal decision in real time.

1 Introdution

The importance of competence and knowledge in Telecommunica-

tion context is constantly growing today, due to several issues (com-

plexity of the hardware and software systems, customer retention,

time-to-market etc.). Nowadays, companies like Telecom Italia are

increasingly distributed world wide. As a result, it is more difficult

to collaborate with ones peer. Therefore, they have recognized that

in order to remain competitive, they must efficiently and effectivelycreate, locate, capture and share their OK in a innovative way. In

particular, the offer and maintenance of new services is the Telecom-

munication field where the ability to reuse and manage competence

and knowledge is a key factor to the success in a competition. Let us

consider the ADSL service. In this context, two groups of technicians

have been identified:

1. help desk/back office technicians: people working in an office,

whose main activity is to help the on-the-field technicians where

some trouble related to the ADSL context occurred;

2. on-the-field/front-end technicians: technicians mainly involved in

provisioning and maintenance activities, for example ADSL com-

ponents installation, troubleshooting, etc.

When a customer wants to install a new ADSL component or some

troubles arise, call the ADSL customer care center of Telecom Italia

who arranges an appointment between the customer and a front-end

technician. Then the front-end technician goes to the customer in

order to perform his work request. In some cases, on-the-field tech-

nicians call help desk/back office technicians for advice. However,

1 Dipartimento di Informatica Universita di Torino, Torino, Italy email: [email protected]

2 Telecom Italia, Torino, Italy email: [email protected]

both the back office and on-the-field technicians usually access to

technical documents, knowledge spread on different web-sites in or-

der to perform their activities. They often do not have on their desk

the last version of a technical manual about an ADSL component

and waste their time searching it on the web. At time, technicians

in two different regional area have two different way to carry out an

activities or to solve a trouble. Therefore, they need to share, fast ac-

cess and manage knowledge regarding the ADSL services, especially

when they are new to the job. We have developed an OKMS, called

Remoter, in order to help technicians during their day-to-day activ-

ities of provisioning and assurance of the ADSL service. Remoterallows ADSL operators to manage, share and apply their collective

OK to take optimal decision in real time. A brief description of the

Remoter Architecture will be given in the following section. Section

3 discusses our motivation developing Remoter system and section

4 describes Remoters user roles and functionalities. In section 5, we

show the OKM phases in Remoter, and finally sections 6 and 7 dis-

cuss related and future work on improving the Remoter system.

2 Remoter Architecture

The proposed system is a three tier web-based architecture, which

allows managing and sharing the OK (see fig. 1). The OK is mainly

based on individuals competence and experience, namely some setsof procedures used by people to construct a genuine strategy tailored

to the peculiarities of a given situation (norms, technical documents,

procedures, personal experience, links to web-site etc...). The pre-

sentation layer contains some GUI modules that provide the user-

interface. This layer provides not only a graphical interface so that

users can interact with the application, insert data, and view the re-

sults of requests, but it also manages the manipulation and format-

ting of data once the client receives it. A client device can com-

municate with Remoter using a web-browser with JavaTM tech-

nology. In fact, the presentation layer consists of either a set of

HTML with JavaScript or ASP and JSP pages. The second tier is

a Web application server running the logic of the disciplined devel-

opment process on the Web server. In particular, it supports some

Logical Modules, which have been developed integrating differ-ent technologies as AutonomyTM Search and Retrieval Engine [7],

eGainTM Knowledge [6], Snitz Forum [8]. Autonomy Search and

Retrieval Engine allows content to be searched and presented with

summaries and hyperlinks to similar information, automatically and

in real-time. eGainTM Knowledge is a conversational Case-based

Reasoning (CCBR) shell. Conversational Case-based Reasoning is a

problem-solving paradigm that is able to utilize the specific knowl-

edge of previously experienced, similar problem situation (case) to

solve a new problem [10]. eGainTM Knowledge stores knowledge


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in the form of cases in a case base. Snitz Forum is a freeware in-

teractive discussion environment that allows different people on the

Internet or an Intranet to leave messages for each other, and then

to reply. Moreover, the middle-tier is responsible of the users au-

thentication and causing client devices to display the applications. A

database server and a document repository constitute the third tier.

The database server is used to store either messages posted by the

users or the eGainTM case base. The document repository is used to

store all knowledge records (i.e. technical documents, pieces of tech-

nical information, norms, software etc...).

The benefits of a three-tier architecture are significant. Being a web

service, the system can be accessed and used from any system with

Internet access and a suitably capable web browser (see fig. 2). Sys-

tems like Laptop, Palmtop, Smart Phone, Wearable Computer, which

are used by the users of Remoter, can be used without any additional

software.

Figure 1. Remoter tree-tier Architecture

3 Motivation

According to Davenport[12], knowledge projects are more likely to

succeed when they can take advantage of a broader infrastructure of

both technology and organization. Technology infrastructure consist

of technologies that are knowledge-oriented. If these tools and the

skills to use them are already present, a particular initiative will have

an easier time getting off the ground. The above technicians usuallyaccess and retrieve documents and software by searching them on

different intranet web-sites. Such intranet web-sites contain hundreds

of thousands of documents (white papers, technical specification and

manual), forums and software about ADSL components, that help

technicians in the provisioning and assurance activities. Therefore,

because technicians were skilled using intranet web-sites, forums and

search engine we chose using a unique web-site with AutonomyTM

and Snitz forum facilities. As regards the CCBR chosen hasbeen mo-

tivated by two reason. On the one hand, CBR technology allow fast

search and access to the knowledge stored in form of cases. This is

a competitive factor especially in the Telecommunication field. Take

the activities of the help-desk technicians. They usually help on-the-

field technicians by reading some technical documents, asking to ex-

Figure 2. Remoter Home Page

pert for advice or submit a new trouble tickets to some ADSL ex-

perts. In such cases, the time is usually of the essence because the

on-the-field technician is on the telephone in real time. In contrast,

CBR application require someone to input a series of cases, which

represent knowledge expressed as a series of problem characteris-

tics and solution. Then, when a on-the-field technician analyst is pre-

sented with a problem, its characteristics can be compared against

the set of cases in the application and the closed match is selected.

On the other hand, the most successful commercial application of

CBR is CCBR. They has been commercially successful in resolving

help desk problems. Unlike expert system, which require that rules

are well structured with no overlaps, case structure can reflect the

fluid thinking that goes in the technicians minds. In fact, help-desk

technicians, typically spend much of their time trying to connect new

problems with known problems and resolving them with known so-

lutions rather than devising new solutions. They recognize problems

partly from the symptoms that are presented to them and partly by

asking questions to elicit further information about the problem. As

they ask questions and receive answers to the questions, they are able

to narrow the search for a solution. CCBR works in a manner similar

to that used by an help-desk technicians. Therefore, at the end of a

benchmark study, we chose to use eGainTM Knowledge.

4 Remoter: user roles and functionalities

There are different kinds of user roles and, as a consequence, differ-ent functionalities of Remoter system. We have identified three main

kinds of user roles, as following:

1. basic user: accesses to Remoter OK but not modify it. She can

also send her feedbacks, message and new knowledge record to

Remoter which will be validated by the knowledge manager.

2. expert user: accesses to Remoter OK but not modify it. Remoter

can also ask her to review some new knowledge record.

3. admin or knowledge manager: monitors, manages and maintains

Remoter OK.

Because of two groups of users (help desk/back office users, on-the-

field users), various features of Remoter system has been developed

to ensure a good access and usage of the system by the all users:


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Search: it provides to the users a search and retrieval engine,

which matches the users queries presenting an ordered list of

knowledge records and forum messages. The users can tune the

number of results that will be displayed and the minimum thresh-

old of relevance. They can also select a check button if they want

a brief summary for each search result. After inserting their query,

the users can then simply click and follow the systems internal

pointers to the selected link. For each selected link, a horizontal

window will be open which contains all related knowledge record

to that link. Technicians can use this functionality in real-time:

for instance, when they have a problem (modem trouble, software

trouble) whose they know the solution (installation manual, driver,

etc), but not where it is.

Diagnosis: it provides to the users the capability for finding out

a solution related to diagnosis troubles. This module of Remoter

is based on a CCBR approach [10]. It interacts with a user in

a conversation to solve a complex query, defined as the set of

questions selected and answered by the user during a conversa-

tion (see fig. 3). The match between the users answers and the

question and answer pairs that make up a particular case, determi-

nates which case scores the highest, and therefore, which resolu-tion or action the search recommends. The technicians can use this

functionality in real-time, for instance when they have a router or

modem trouble whose they know a set of symptoms but not the

solution.

Feedback: thanks to this feature, technicians could send to Re-

moter feedbacks at any time. Let us consider the diagnosis pro-

cess. Once the operator reaches a the solution, Remoter asks

her/him to submit a feedback related to the solution. In the feed-

back form, the users caninsert a textual feedback, upload a file and

select a vote for the adequacy of the proposed solution. However,

they could forget to fill in the feedback form or they can also close

the Web Browser or the connection in order to apply the solution

proposed by Remoter before to fill in the feedback form. The con-

nection could close itself because of session ended or a networktrouble. Therefore, at every log on, a feedback form is proposed to

the user. The operator can choose to fill in or to skip the feedback

form. In this way, the users have always the chance to submit their

feedbacks even if the connection failed or closed. Moreover, the

user can see all feedback related to the selected solution. The user

feedbacks are very important because allow the knowledge man-

ager to upgrade and maintain the case base. In fact, the knowledge

manager can easily check the user feedbacks attached to all solu-

tions navigating a tree, which represents the case base. In this way

the knowledge manager can update the case base, delete obsolete

out-of-date knowledge or insert new knowledge.

Docs: Docs functionality allows the users to navigate through

some knowledge record folder. Document repository is dividedby thematic areas (see fig. 4). This functionality is like a file

system paradigm because it is based on the assumption the user

knows what kind of thematic area the knowledge record belongs

to. Moreover, the knowledge record is labelled as a news if it is

just inserted in Remoter. The knowledge manager can only insert

new knowledge records, and for each them he/she can check the

button news and insert a brief summary.

Forum: according to Marwick [2], collaboration systems like fo-

rum can support the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge. On-

line discussion database are potential tool to capture tacit knowl-

edge and to apply it to immediate problems. Thanks to this func-

tionality, the user can post and read messages i.e. can share his/her

solution to a particular problem. The archive of the forum becomes

a repository of useful knowledge. In Remoter, we realized the fo-

rum using Snitz forum 2000, an interactive and freeware discus-

sion environment.

News: it allows reading the last news (knowledge records, feed-

back, messages, software) inserted by the knowledge manager.

The users can register themselves to the automatic newsletter

checking their interest areas. Remoter will send an e-mail to all

users subscribed to thematic area where a news has been inserted.

Figure 3. Diagnosis functionality

Figure 4. Docs functionality

5 Remoter: a system based on OKM Framework

Remoter is a KMS, which aims to capture, share and apply the

OK developed by skilled telecommunication technicians during their

day-to-day activities. Nowadays, Companies like Telecom Italia are


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increasingly distributed. As a result, it is more difficult to collaborate

with ones peer. Therefore, they have recognized that in order to re-

main competitive, they must efficiently and effectively create, locate,

capture and share the technicians knowledge (OK) in an innovative

way. This is what we called Operational Knowledge Management

(OKM).

The OK is converting from simple and explicit procedure to tacit

and individual competence (i.e. knowledge based on individual ex-

perience developed by exchanging information among people). We

claim that OK becomes an innovative factor in a competition only if

it becomes explicit and shared. Therefore, we have defined an Oper-

ational Knowledge Management Framework (OKMF) that is a local

approach to Knowledge Management. The OKMF is defined by three

distinct phases [4] [1] [3] (see fig. 5):

Figure 5. OKM phases

1. Knowledge Acquisition: is the phase of capturing existing domains

knowledge and storing it into a repository (in a structured man-

ner);

2. Knowledge Dissemination: is the phase where the repositorys

knowledge is accessed and used by the users;

3. Knowledge Up-grade: is the phase of monitoring and up-grading

repositorys knowledge during peoples day-to-day activities (such

as interacting with other people and computer systems).

From the temporal point of view, we have the Acquisition of

knowledge. Then it will be possible to use it, during the Dissemina-tion phase. Afterwards, there should be a cycle of use and upgrade of

knowledge. This means that the users will be able to add new knowl-

edge to the repository during the knowledge use as well. In this way

we do not need to acquire this new knowledge during a formal phase

(Acquisition), but we derive it directly by the usage of the OKMS

itself. However, it will be necessary to go back to the Acquisition

phase, usually when the knowledge into the repository becomes out-

of-date or inconsistent.

5.1 Remoter Knowledge Acquisition Phase

The Knowledge Acquisition is the phase of capturing existing do-

mains knowledge and storing it into a repository. According to Var-

gas [9], three parties play an important role in the success of the

knowledge acquisition process: the knowledge elicitor, the knowl-

edge programmer and the expert. In our approach, both the knowl-

edge elicitor and programmer are the same person, also called knowl-

edge engineer.

Because of different Remoter main functionalities (DOCS, Forum

and Diagnosis), we can distinguish three main different kinds of

knowledge source to acquire: knowledge records (i.e. technical docu-

ments, pieces of technical information, norms, software etc...), mes-

sages posted in some existing forum related to ADSL domain and

technicians expertise. In order to acquire them, we used the same

knowledge acquisition approach. In particular we can subdivide the

knowledge acquisition process in four phases: selecting the profes-

sionals who qualify as experts, collecting OK, structuring OK ac-

cording to the different functionalities and validating of the struc-

tured OK. As regards the Docs functionality we gathered the knowl-

edge records from the experts, published and structured them accord-

ing to a file system hierarchy. Instead, as regards to the Forum func-

tionality we gathered some posted messages from existing ADSL fo-

rum and published them structuring according to categories of ADSL

context. Both Docs hierarchy and Forum categories are validatedwith the expert users themselves. Finally, we consider the Diagno-

sis functionality, which is built on CCBR shell. CCBR is a problem-

solving paradigm that is able to utilize the specific knowledge of pre-

viously experienced, similar problem situation (case) to solve a new

problem. A case is a list of question and answer pairs. Therefore, the

case base, that is a set of cases, can be thought as a tree. In particu-

lar, eGainTM Knowledge provides to the knowledge engineer a very

user-friendly interface, called eGainTM Knowledge Author, which

allows building step-by-step the case base. Therefore, starting from

the OK sources, we planned the overall case base structure in term

of case clusters, and associated links among them. Each case clus-

ter has been identified by the symptoms of the problem to include.

Then starting from the symptoms, we have recognized the underlying

problems, and for each of them we have listed all possible solutions.Once we had the top (symptom/problem) and bottom (solutions)

of the case cluster, we have created a consistent and efficient route

between the problem and its solution. This route is composed by a

list of question and answer pairs. Finally, in order to get a consistent

and efficient list of question and answer pairs we have followed some

sample CCBR guidelines [10].

5.2 Remoter Knowledge Dissemination/Up-gradePhases

Most traditional knowledge management systems do not consider

a formal knowledge up-grade phase. Especially, they do not relate

the Knowledge Dissemination with the Knowledge Up-grade phase.Fischer and Ostwald [5], for example, claim that traditional knowl-

edge management systems are based under assumption that all the

knowledge needs are stored into the repository during the knowledge

acquisition phase. In fact, once that all domains knowledge is stored

into a repository, the users are able to access and retrieve the stored

knowledge at least until it becomes out-of-date or inconsistent,

such as for a strong innovation technology. In other words, this

perspective treats knowledge workers as passive recipients of

information. Our OKM perspective is based under assumption that

knowledge workers create new knowledge during their work and

mainly when they use knowledge of the KMS. Therefore, Remoter

allows telecommunication operators to integrate new knowledge

at use time. As regards the Diagnosis functionality, the upgrade


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of case base is managed by knowledge manager. Basic or expert

users can send feedbacks related to the solutions proposed during

the diagnosis process. Afterwards the knowledge manager can val-

idate or reject feedbacks in order to upgrade the case base (see fig. 6).

Figure 6. Managing feedback example

As regards Forum functionality, the upgrade is managed by a

knowledge manager or a moderator. The operators can post mes-

sages to the Forum. Then the moderator can edit or delete the new

messages posted. Finally, as regards the Docs functionality we devel-

oped a knowledge up-grade strategy in which upgrades are reviewed

and analyzed by trusted and reliable reviewers. This knowledge Up-

grade strategy can be divided in two methods:

1. Direct Knowledge Up-grade: the knowledge manager can only

add new knowledge directly;

2. Indirect Knowledge Up-grade: the new knowledge record (candi-

date) is added by the knowledge manager after it is reviewed by

a set of expert users. In Remoter there are three different kinds of

user: basic user, admin or knowledge manager and expert user.

Each user can be an expert in one or more thematic areas of

ADSL context. In particular, this methods can be divided into

steps shown in fig. 7. Once a user uploaded a candidate knowledge

record, he/she must check the thematic areas whose the knowledge

record belong to. Afterwards the candidate will be send to all ex-

pert users belong to thematic areas of the candidate. The expertusers can voice a vote, attach a comment and send an e-mail to the

user who sent the new candidate knowledge record. At any mo-

ment, the knowledge manager can check the grand total of expert

users who reviewed the candidate and the average of its votes. In

this way the knowledge manager can publish the new knowledge

record or not.

6 Related work

Turning to related work, Smith and Farquhar [13] describe an ap-

proach to Knowledge Management which combines different areas

and technologies. They describe their experience at the Schlumberger

Figure 7. Knowledge UpGrade process

company with developing a KMS, called InTouch. InTouch allows

sharing and applying knowledge among different Schlumbergers

CoPs which are engaged in what they called field activities often

on remote seismic vessels or drilling rigs to find and develop oil and

gas reservoirs. As our technicians from the ADSL context, Schlum-

bergers CoPs are directly involved in the field activities and share a

set of procedures or norms need to do their jobs. Both approaches,

InTouch and our emphasize the importance of upgrading the knowl-

edge hub (i.e. the knowledge repository) to memebers of CoPs (i.e.

technicians) during their normal work. However, InTouch does not

support technologies which represent knowledge in a structured man-

ner like CBR. On the other hand, InTouch offers knowledge manage-

ment functionality that are no part of our system like expertise direc-

tory, best practices repository.

The substantial list of deployed applications of CCBR for Knowl-

edge Management include, for example, a knowledge management

system for PC troubleshooting [15]. As our approach, the author em-

phasize the importance of CCBR technique of supporting the knowl-

edge management activities, including knowledge capture, knowl-

edge development, knowledge sharing and knowledge utilization.

When compared to our approach this system lack the upgrade level

that is partially provided in our approach by using the feedback

mechanism. On the other hand, the author combined ontology with

the CCBR techniques to ensure the effective communication amongusers and system. Another application that uses CCBR technique was

implemented at NEC [14]. NEC is using knowledge stored in a case

library to reach unprecedented levels in quality control and market-

ing of its products. Alike our approach an important issue they have

addresses refers to maintenance of case bases that used to be update

manually. The obvious problems arising from manual update were

overcome with the creation of FAQ case bases automatically, allow-

ing creation and understanding to be implemented without human

intervention. The system, called SignFinder, detects variation in the

case bases generated automatically from customer calls. When they

detect variations on the content of typical customers requests, they

can discover knowledge about defects on their products. Besides, the

automatic update of case library allows the timely sharing of new


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defects solving the knowledge sharing obstacle they face due to the

magnitude of their organization.

7 Future work

Due to the complexity of the ADSL domain each technicians has

his/her own vocabulary to express the operational knowledge. In thecontext of knowledge sharing, as Remoter, to have different vocabu-

lary could be a drawback. In recent years the development of ontolo-

gies has moved from the realm of Artificial Intelligence laboratories

to the desktop of domain experts. Ontologies have become common

on the World-Wide Web. Many languages as Resource Description

Framework (RDF), Darpa Agent Markup Language and Ontology

Inference Layer (DAML+OIL), Karlsrurhe Ontology (KAON) and

OWL (Ontology Web Layer) were developed for encoding knowl-

edge on the Web to make it computer processable. Therefore, we

are developing an ADSL ontology in order to share common under-

standing of the operational knowledge among people. We are using

Text-to- Onto, an open-source ontology management infrastructure,

in order to create an ADSL ontology [11]. It facilitates ontology engi-

neering by discovering taxonomical and non-taxonomical conceptual

relationship between concepts from texts. The aims of the ADSL on-

tology are on the one hand to have an ontological commitments for

telecommunication technicians and on the other hand to improve the

Knowledge Up-grade phase with regard the Diagnosis context. The

Knowledge Up-grade phase for the diagnosis functionality is related

to the feedbacks which are submitted by telecommunication opera-

tors. This feedbacks are related to the solutions proposed by Remoter.

Moreover, Remoter provide an ASP window to the knowledge man-

ager which represents the case base with those feedbacks. Thanks

to this ASP window and to the knowledge author module provided

by eGain, the knowledge manager may upgrade the case base. We

would, for instance, using ADSL ontology, be able to suggest the ap-

propriate concepts for feedback to the telecommunication operatorsin order to automatize the up-grading of the case base.

Future issues that will be also explored include using of the agent

technologies in order to capture users profiles, to automatize the

question and answer flows with regard the diagnosis functionality,

to have a distribute knowledge base (document repository, case base

and messages) and finally to build an Expertise Location System

which have the goal of suggesting the names of person who have

knowledge in a particular area [2].

8 Conclusions and experiments

Remoter is an Operational Knowledge Management System

(OKMS) that enables telecommunication technicians from ADSLcontext to share, capture and apply their collective operational

knowledge (OK) to take optimal decision in real time. In particular,

two groups of users have been identified: help desk/back office users,

on-the-filed users. Because of two groups of users, various features

of REMOTER system has been developed to ensure a good access

and usage of the system by all the users: Docs, Diagnosis, Forum,

Feedback, News, Search. However, the proposed system is a three

tier web-based application. Therefore being a web service, the sys-

tem can be accessed and used from any system with Internet access

and a suitably web browser.

For the Remoter development an Operational Knowledge Manage-

ment Framework (OKMF) has been followed [1]. The OKMF is

based of three main phases: Knowledge Acquisition, Knowledge

Dissemination and Knowledge Up-grade. The Knowledge Acqui-

sition campaign has been conducted on the experts of the ADSL

context. Because of different Remoter functionalities, OK has been

acquired modelled and then implemented into different structures

(knowledge record, case base, messages). One of the main features

of our OKMF is the relation between the knowledge dissemination

and the knowledge up-grade phases. In fact, our OKM perspective is

based under assumption that knowledge workers create new knowl-

edge during their work and mainly when they use knowledge of the

OKMS. Therefore, Remoter allows telecommunication operators to

integrate new knowledge at use time. Finally, besides Diagnosis and

Forum functionalities, we have introduced a knowledge up-grade

strategy with regard to the Docs functionality in which upgrades are

reviewed and analyzed by trusted and reliable reviewers.

Initial assessment of Remoter has been very positive. In particular

Remoter has been field proved for the last six months of the 2003

in two Telecom territorial areas (TA) of Italy. Significant saving in

the energy, time and number of phone calls from on-the-field to

help/desk technicians has been realized with the help of Remoter.

Each TA had about 30 technicians (one sixth of them were help/desk

technicians) which used Remoter. At the beginning of the trials, Re-moter contained about 50 cases, 400 knowledge records and 60 mes-

sages posted. After six months, the OK in Remoter has been extended

to incorporate more than 100 cases, 700 knowledge records and 250

messages posted.

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eca i 04 workshop

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