1. No category

Searching Solutions for the Mobile Workforce
Collaborative Information Management for Mobile Workers
BT Innovation & Design
Géry Ducatel, Botond Virginas
Content
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Context of what we are doing
History
Current solutions
Outlook
© British Telecommunications plc
Information Management for Mobile Workers
• Field engineers rely on mobile applications to
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call colleagues/back-office
keep customers informed
access online documents
consult maps
report progress
Bill customers
submit timesheets, drivers’ log, etc
• Lack of application support drives performance down
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Poor visibility on job history
no guidance
portal information not contextualised
job reports unexploited for sharing expert knowledge
poor data quality hampers analytics
hard to check/enforce schedule adherence
out-of-sync scheduler generates sub-optimal tours
© British Telecommunications plc
History
• Search Engine for User Manuals/Technical 2007 - 09
content
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Based on lucene
Segment pages into smaller chunks
Good quality results
Personalised term association
• Query suggestion engine
2009
– Developed to support user forums
• Collaborative approach to Information
Management
– xMobile trial
© British Telecommunications plc
2009 - 11
© British Telecommunications plc
Component Layers
Web Interface
Search engine
Information Transformation Layer
Content Analysis Modules
Natural
Language
Semantic
Analysis
Ontology
Query
Modeling/Editor
Augmented
Query suggestions
Reference DB
Technical
© British Telecommunications plc
Health and Safety
Index
I can not get my BT Hub Phone 1010 to register to the BT Hub
<SENTENCE>
<NO_MEANING>I</NO_MEANING>
<NO_MEANING>can</NO_MEANING>
<NO_MEANING>not</NO_MEANING>
<VERB><RAW_VERB>get</RAW_VERB><BASE_FORM>get</BASE_FORM></NOUN>
<NO_MEANING>my</NO_MEANING>
<PRODUCT><PROPER_NOUN>BT Hub Phone 1010</PROPER_NOUN></PRODUCT>
<NO_MEANING>to</NO_MEANING>
<VERB><RAW_VERB>register</RAW_VERB><BASE_FORM>register</BASE_FORM></VERB>
<NO_MEANING>to</NO_MEANING>
<NO_MEANING>the</NO_MEANING>
<PRODUCT><PROPER_NOUN>BT hub</PROPER_NOUN></PRODUCT>
</SENTENCE>
Query analysis:
Strong verbs: get, register
Strong nouns:
Products: BT Hub Phone 1010, BT Hub
© British Telecommunications plc
Figure 3
Query Building Engine
Query:
I can not get my BT Hub Phone 1010 to register to
the BT Hub
Computer representation:
telephone
1010 phone
router
payphone
fax
Consumables
1015 phone
Home hub
Vision
Indexed content
© British Telecommunications plc
registration
installation
ring
connection
security
billing
xMobile
© British Telecommunications plc
xMobile Unique Selling Points
What it does
Anticipated Benefits
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 Reduce data overload and
information gaps.
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Improve information flow across the BT
field force
Exploit Web2.0 social communication
tools in field-engineering:
– Support information sharing
– Speed-up information capture
– Support access to existing data
Anticipate future mobility platforms such
as smart phones, tablets etc.
How it does it
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A Wiki-based tool to support Openreach
field engineers with context sensitive
information capture and delivery.
Provides tagged task-reports and geocoded notes.
Map view allows location sensitive
information delivery.
Exploit current field information sources.
© British Telecommunications plc
 Fewer requests to legacy
sources and calls to backoffice.
 Improvements in RFT, and CT.
xMobile Overview
BT OR / THIRD PARTY
CONTEXT / CONTENT
SERVICES
Expected
end time?
Fault
diagnosis?
Core func.
Where's
the team?
Take a
photo
Wifi
hotspots?
Experts to
talk to?
PRESENTATION
Job
history?
APPLICATION
LOGIC
- Query
suggestion
- Entity
Analysis
INT.
DBs
Best docs
to read?
CP product
to recomm.
Reroute
my calls
© British Telecommunications plc
xMobile
BT OR
DBs
xMobile
© British Telecommunications plc
Wiki Interface for Laptops (web based)
Job Description
Search
eAssistant
Search H&S
Job History
© British Telecommunications plc
Search Documentation
Query Suggestions
Search technical info or H&S
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Conclusions
• Re-focus on Information retrieval
– Looking for vertical applications
– Search, and present, information
• Multimodal interaction
– Intuitive and creative interfaces (smaller devices)
• Closer monitoring of job execution
– Information about job progress
– Contextual information
– Communication opportunities
• Stronger IT presence with mobile workers
– Job standardisation
– More complex business processes
© British Telecommunications plc
Future Work
• Focus on Management of Knowledge
– Capture information
– Share Information
– Integrate knowledge
• How to respond to rapid changes of the data
• How to extract relevant information
– Entity Analysis
– Removing duplication
• How to identify documentation gaps
– Add new documentation
– Remove obsolete content
© British Telecommunications plc
Thank you
© British Telecommunications plc