HELP DESK SYSTEM

A PROJECT REPORT

in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree

of

Bachelor of Technology

in

Computer Science & Engineering

Submitted by

KUMAR KARTIKEYA UPADHYAY

1113310103

NOIDA INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING &

TECHNOLOGY, GREATER NOIDA (U P)

SEPTEMBER, 2014

DECLARATION

I Kumar Kartikeya Upadhyay hereby declare that this submission is our own work and that,

to the best of our knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or

written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the

award of any other degree or diploma of the university or other institute of higher learning,

except where due acknowledgment has been made in the text.

Signature

Kumar Kartikeya Upadhyay

1113310103

ABSTRACT

Automated help desk systems should retrieve exactly the information required to assist a

user as quickly and as easily as possible either for a lay user who knows little about the

domain or for an advanced user who requires more specialist information. Automated help

desk systems should also be easily maintainable as knowledge in domains where help is

required often changes very rapidly, for example help for computer users. The aim of this

study was to develop a help desk information retrieval mechanism suitable for a wide range

of users and to provide a way of easily maintaining the system. The prototype developed for

use over the World Wide Web combines keyword search and case based reasoning to

provide both rapid focusing on a part of the help information and guided interaction when

the user is unclear about appropriate keywords. Ease of maintenance is provided by using

Multiple Classification Ripple down Rules (MCRDR) to maintain the domain knowledge in

the system. Further issues that arise include the problem of inappropriate focusing by

keyword and maintenance in a distributed environment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank to all my guides who really acted as pillars to help my way

through-out this project that has led to successful and satisfactory completion of this

project.

First of all, I thank P.I. Softek Limited for recruiting me as a technical intern for duration

of 1.5 months. It has been a great experience working in P.I. Softek Limited and it has

enabled me to apply my skills and provided me with a good exposure to the ever

competing Information Systems Sector.

I am also thankful to Mr. Rajiv sharma (Project Director) for providing me the

opportunity to do my technical internship in the esteemed organization.

I am highly thankful to Mr. Tejendra Singh (Support Engineer) for providing me the

best possible guidance and making me aware of the working methodologies

I am also thankful to Mr. Pradeep Chaurasia (Team Leader) for providing me with

the technical guidance for implementing the project.

LIST OF FIGURES

Page NO.

Figure 1 – V-MODEL DIAGRAM 8

Figure 2 – TICKET CREATION 11

Figure 3 - SUPPORTER PAGE 11

Figure 4 –OPEN TICKETS TABLE 12

Figure 5 – TICKET SEARCH PAGE 12

Figure 6 –ADD TO KNOWLEDGE BASE PAGE 13

Figure 7 – UPDATE LOG BUTTON 13

Table of Content

Page no.

Declaration

Certificate

Abstract

Acknowledgement

List of figures

Chapter 1 - Company overview 1

1.1 PISOFTEK’S Mission 1

1.1.1 One firm Many Services

1.1.2 Our people

1.1.3 Verticals

1.2 Product Development 2

1.2.1 Benefits of Outsourcing Product Development to PISOFTEK

1.3 Solution Framework 3

Chapter 2 – Help Desk System 4

2.1 Introduction 4

2.2 Related Work 5

2.2.1 Information retrieving studies

2.3 Expert system approach 6

2.3.1 Rule based Approach

2.3.2 Case based approach

Chapter 3 - Software Development Model Used 8

Chapter 4 – Testing 9

4.1 White box testing 9

4.2 Black box testing 9

4.3 Testing levels 9

4.3.1 Unit testing

4.3.2 Functional testing

4.3.3 Performance testing

4.3.4 Stress testing

4.3.5 Structure testing

Chapter 5 – Screenshots 11

Chapter 6 – Conclusion 14

Chapter 7 - My role during internship 15

Chapter 8 – Future Enhancements 16

Chapter 9 - References 17

1. COMPANY OVERVIEW

1.1 PISOFTEK's Mission

To be a leader in providing best-of-breed solutions to SMEs through best-in-class people

1.1.1 One firm, many services

PISOFTEK is a full software service firm. We provide exceptional software development

services for our clients, who range from small businesses Software needs from a single

source, which is why we offer a wide variety of services. Choose from our offerings wanting

to optimally utilize IT Outsourcing to large corporations desiring full robost ,mission critical

applications. At PIS, we believe you should be able to obtain a complete solution for all your

to create a solution customized to your company's needs:

* IT Consultancy

* Offshore Development & Maintenance

* Internet marketing

* Search engine optimization

* E commerce solutions

* Software Implimentation

* QA Services

1.1.2 Our people

Innovative staff, innovative solutions

We have been providing original, effective software solutions to our clients for the past

eleven years. During this time, we've grown to a large cohesive team, including positions in

design, programming, Business Analysts, QA Analysts, Implimentation experts and

management. Whether you're searching to manage your existing software or if you want to

completely overhaul your application with new features, our staff is here to help. With in-

depth knowledge of both the creative and technical aspects of design, development, and

implimentation, we will guide to help you achive your desired results.

We believe that only mantra for successful outsourcing business is to provide 'In-house'

experience of offshore team to the client. Our processes, tools and methodologies are always

oriented to fulfill this mantra.

1.1.3 Verticals

Banking and Financial Services

Health Care

Biotechnology

Government

Telecommunications

Software and Technology

Manufacturing

Distribution

Retail

Insurance

Media & Entertainment

And others.

1.2 PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Product Development is a complex process requiring in-depth expertise in technology and

agile processes. Recognized as an Offshore Product Development leader, PISOFTEK

understands the associated challenges, and with its vast experience, has devised strategies to

overcome.

PISOFTEK's product development offerings include:

Outsourced Product Development in all major technologies

End-to-end Product lifecycle management

Re-engineering of products created in obsolete technologies now obsolete

Product Quality Engineering right from the Requirements analysis stage

Full deployment & maintenance support; 24x7, if needed

Product Development using custom methodology

If you are looking for end-to-end Product Development, do not compromise; let us show you

our value proposition and see the difference.

E-mail us at sales@pisoftek.com and we will get in touch with you within 1 business day.

1.2.1 Benefits of Outsourcing Product Development to PISOFTEK

Cost reduction of over 50% using PISOFTEK's offshore center

Market your product faster with the Outsourcing approach

Have world's best engineers design and develop your product

Receive recommendations on which technologies to use

Get Guaranteed results using our proprietary Methodology

Get complete post-development support; 24x7, if required

1.3 SOLUTION FRAMEWORK

PISOFTEK is a leading provider for Small and Medium size Businesses (SMBs). We provide

feature and quality rich, custom-based solutions. Our integrated solutions give you distinct

way to market advantage and incredible cost savings. All the solutions are future based

deploying the best technology.

PISOFTEK makes a difference:

by providing industry specific solutions

by furnishing customers with value added, innovative and consistent solutions

with scalable, maintenance-free, and flexible solutions

by offering best technological solutions focusing on the current and future business needs

by providing cost-effective and qualitative solutions

Besides all these differences, PISOFTEK's core concentration is on client's requirements and

needs. We offer different solutions will help your business accurately meet your needs and

differentiate you from your competitors. Opt for complete software and business solutions,

designed, built and hosted by experts of PISOFTEK.

2. HELP DESK SYSTEM

2.1 Introduction

In many areas various forms of help desk service provide users with help. In conventional

help desk services, groups of human experts who differ in their knowledge and expertise try

to solve the customer’s problems. Their roles are determined according to their problem

solving ability and the degree of the problem difficulty. Thus, to provide help desk service of

high quality, the availability of high level experts is crucial. However, the number of such

high level experts is limited, and the demand for the automated help desk systems is

increasing. An expert system approach is a feasible solution. In addition to this, world wide

computer networks such as the Internet are becoming the major communication media. The

rapid communication enabled by such computer networks has also increased the demand for

efficient maintenance of the knowledge for the help desk services. The overall aim of this

study is to develop better methods of maintaining knowledge bases for help desk system

while improving their usability.

For the discussion here knowledge based systems are roughly classified into two groups, i.e.,

rule based and case bases. Although, the rule representation is most popular in the expert

system community, the case based reasoning (CBR) approach has been frequently used to

build help desk systems (Kriegsman and Barletta, 1993; Barletta, 1993a; Shimazu et al.,

1994; Simoudis, 1992). Most of these systems, however, require a major effort to maintain

the case base. We propose to use the Multiple Classification Ripple Down Rules (MCRDR)

method to reduce the case base maintenance cost and speed up the maintenance process. The

MCRDR method is a case based maintenance method with which the expert can develop and

maintain the case base without the help of the knowledge engineers. In the MCRDR method,

when the CBR system retrieves cases which are identified by the user as inappropriate, the

systems simply asks the expert to identify the important features which distinguish the

incorrectly retrieved cases from the present case. The expert also adds the relevant

information needed by the user to the new case so it can be added to the case base for future

retrieval. It is indexed using the distinguishing features identified by the experts and

information from the previous incorrect retrieval of the other cases (Kang and Compton,

1994). This simple approach allows large systems to be easily built (Compton et. al., 1993).

The earlier simpler version of MCRDR, Ripple Down Rules (RDR), was used to maintain the

Pathology Expert Interpreting Report System (PEIRS) in St. Vincent Hospital, Sydney. This

system showed a very high level of performance and was developed and maintained by

experts as part of their normal duties without any knowledge engineering support (Edwards et

al., 1993; Compton et al., 1994; Kang et al., 1994; Perston et al., 1994).

In this study, it is assumed that the help desk system is to be used by various users from

experts to novices. It is also designed to be constructed and maintained through the World

Wide Web (WWW) with remote users directly retrieving information. How to provide a

suitable interface for the various types of the remote user, especially for the novice user, and

how to maintain the consistency of the case base perhaps maintained by the multiple experts

are important research issues in this study. In some sense, a help desk system can be seen as

an information retrieving system. The information is saved as cases. The major difference

between the proposed method and the conventional information retrieving methods is that the

proposed method focuses on using human expertise to develop and maintain the way in

which a user interacts with the system to produce appropriate information retrieval.

2.2 Related Work

A user’s request to a help desk service can be classified into two types: information search

and diagnosis of his/her problems. One may simply seek for new information. “What is

WWW?” is a typical example of this type of information search. One may also seek for a

solution to his/her problem. ”My printer does not work!” is a typical example of this type of

diagnosis. The issues related to these requests are studied in the information retrieval area and

the knowledge based diagnosis area. In this section, we briefly summarize these related issues

together with knowledge maintenance issues and interface issues which are also important

when we try to develop a practical system.

2.2.1 Information Retrieving Studies

Many information retrieval studies focus on how to find the relevant information from a large

text base. A simple approach is collecting related documents and providing a search engine

with the collection. The major research issues in this area fall into 1) the text representation,

2) the user query representation, and 3) the retrieving method. The text representation is one

of the classical issues in the information retrieving studies. The simple approach extracts all

words in the documents with exceptions such as pronouns and articles. Use of the statistical

measurement of word appearance, i.e., the term frequency, is also used to supply additional

information (Salton et al., 1994, Lewis, 1992).

The user query representation is studied to accurately capture the user requests. The simple

approach is to capture the requests by keyword combinations. Natural language

understanding and sophisticated interaction techniques (Callan and Croft, 1993) are also

studied to provide a better interface.

The retrieval function (Salton and J. McGill, 1983) actually selects and ranks the documents.

The ranking method is particularly important when many documents are selected. Since

simple boolean logic does not cover the ranking, various statistical methods such as k-nearest

neighbors are used to provide the ranking for the selected documents. These information

retrieving methods are useful in constructing a help desk system. This is particularly so if the

task is to search for new information. Diagnosis type help services can also be handled by

providing the relevant documents. However, this type of system assumes that the user can

specify the appropriate keywords to search for the related documents. If the user does not

have the skill to provide proper keywords, the system may fail to retrieve the relevant

documents or may find too many irrelevant documents. Since natural language understanding

still has a performance problem, how to provide better information retrieval to the novice

user who is lacking such skills remains a research issue.

2.3 Expert System Approach

2.3.1 Rule Based Approach

Many expert systems have been developed for diagnostic problems (Boose, 1989). Rules are

the most popular representation for the knowledge base in the expert system. The methods to

obtain rules are classified into two categories, automated methods (machine learning) and

manual methods (e.g. interviewing) (Boose, 1991). Regardless of which method is used, the

rule based approach constructs a knowledge base which interprets the problem and suggests

solutions. Though rules in the knowledge base are a good source of help for the user, they are

different from a set of documents which are used in an information retrieval system.

There are common criticisms about rule based approaches (Barletta, 1993b). The first one is

that it is hard to construct a knowledge base. The second one is that it is hard to maintain the

knowledge base. Another criticism is that a rule based system is brittle. The second criticism

is particularly crucial for the help desk system development since it should be able to

accommodate changing knowledge. Note that these criticisms are based on the classical rule

based approaches. There have been many attempts to solve these problems. The most

common approach is based on the idea of a “knowledge level” (Newell, 1982) analysis of a

situation in a software engineering type of approach to knowledge acquisition (Wielinga et

al., 1992).

2.3.2 Case Based Approach

Although many have worked on rule based systems, a case based reasoning(CBR) approach

is frequently used to build help desk systems. SMART(Acorn, 1992), CASCADE (Simoudis,

1992) and CARET (Shimazu, et al., 1994) are the examples of help desk systems which use a

CBR approach. CBR builds expert systems using past cases to solve new problems (Sycara

and Ashley, 1991). It is based on the cognitive assumptions that real expertise comes from

the experience of the expert, and that episodic memory (Slade, 1991; Stottler, et al., 1989) is

an appropriate way to model the expertise. The approach of CBR is not to find appropriate

rules in a knowledge base, but to find similar cases from the case base. CBR is appropriate

when there is no formalized knowledge in the domain or where it is difficult for the expert to

express their expertise in the rule format. In general, an expert is good at judging cases but

not good at providing knowledge in the abstract (Manago and Kodratoff, 1987).

The functional similarity between CBR and information retrieval methods is that both

methods carry out their task by retrieving the relevant cases or documents. Both methods

maintain a set of cases/documents and the new cases/documents are added into the database

or the later use (Barletta, 1993b). While information retrieving studies concentrate on

retrieval from large document data bases (Barletta, 1993b; Callan and Croft, 1993), CBR

approaches try to represent the human problem solving knowledge in the case representation.

Many CBR researchers claim that the knowledge acquisition bottleneck is solved by

maintaining a case base since the addition of new knowledge into the system can be

performed by the simple addition of new cases. However, a CBR system needs a good case

retrieval mechanism and a good case base maintenance method. If a CBR system lacks these

methods, it can not solve a problem because it may find consistent, irrelevant or outdated

cases

3. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT MODEL USED: THE V-

MODEL

The V-model is a software development model which can be presumed to be the extension of

the waterfall model. Instead of moving down in a linear way, the process steps are bent

upwards after the coding phase, to form the typical V shape. The V-Model demonstrates the

relationships between each phase of the development life cycle and its associated phase of

testing.

Fig. 1 V-Model Diagram

4. TESTING

Software testing can be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a computer

program/application/product:

meets the requirements that guided its design and development,

works as expected,

can be implemented with the same characteristics,

and satisfies the needs of stakeholders.

Software testing, depending on the testing method employed, can be implemented at any time

in the software development process.

Software testing methods are traditionally divided into white- and black-box testing. These

two approaches are used to describe the point of view that a test engineer takes when

designing test cases.

4.1 White-box testing

Also known as clear box testing, glass box testing, transparent box testing and structural

testing tests internal structures or workings of a program, as opposed to the functionality

exposed to the end-user. In white-box testing an internal perspective of the system, as well as

programming skills, are used to design test cases. The tester chooses inputs to exercise paths

through the code and determine the appropriate outputs. This is analogous to testing nodes in

a circuit, e.g. in-circuit testing (ICT).

4.2 Black -box testing

This treats the software as a "black box", examining functionality without any knowledge of

internal implementation. The testers are only aware of what the software is supposed to do,

not how it does it.

4.3 Testing levels:

4.3.1 Unit Testing

Unit testing focuses on testing the individual modules. This test detects errors in coding and

logic within each program. Each program is checked for its consistency. There are four

categories of tests that a programmer will typically perform on a program unit:

Functional Tests, Performance Tests, Stress Tests, Structure Tests

4.3.2 Functional Testing

It involves exercising the code with nominal values for which the expected results are known,

as well as boundary values and special values.

4.3.3 Performance Testing

The amount of execution time spent in various parts of the unit, program throughput,

response time, and device utilization by the program unit.

4.3.4 Stress Testing

Stress tests are those tests designed to intentionally break the unit. A great deal can be learned

about the strengths and limitations of a program by examining the manner in which a

program unit breaks.

4.3.5 Structure Testing

Structure tests are concerned with exercising the internal logic of a program and traversing

particular execution paths. Some authors refer collectively to functional, performance, and

stress testing as “black box” testing.

Acceptance Testing

Acceptance testing involves planning and execution of functional tests, performance tests,

and stress tests to verify that the implemented system satisfies its requirements.

Integration Testing

In Integration testing, all modules are integrated and the entire software is tested for serial

addition and expected validation. Strategies for integrating software components into a

functioning product include the bottom-up strategy, the top-down strategy, and the sandwich

strategy. The integration strategy dictates the order in which modules must be available, and

thus exerts a strong influenc on e the order in which modules are written debugged, and unit

tested.

Bottom-up integration

Bottom-up integration is the traditional strategy used to integrate the components of a

software system into a functioning whole. Bottom-up integration consists of Unit testing,

followed by subsystem testing, followed by testing of the entire system.

Top-down integration

Top-down integration starts with the main routine and one or two immediately

subordinate routines in the system structure. Top-down integration requires the use of

program stubs to simulate the effect of lower-level routines that are called by those being

tested.

5. SCREENSHOTS

Fig. 2 Ticket creation

Fig. 3 Supporter page

Fig. 4 Open Tickets Table

Fig. 5 Ticket search page

Fig 6.Add to knowledge base page

Fig. 7 Update log button

6. CONCLUSION

This study has shown that the MCRDR method (a kind of a case base reasoning system) can

provide an effective framework to develop a help desk system. The contents of the case base

can be easily maintained by a human expert with the help of MCRDR functions as MCRDR

can keep track of the problem solving contexts in the past and store them in the knowledge

base. The combined use of keyword search and MCRDR seems likely to provide an excellent

interface for a range of users for the help desk system by reducing unnecessary interaction

between the system and the user. Since the frame work is quite general, it could be applied to

various kinds of help desk systems.

7. MY ROLE DURING INTERNSHIP

In this project the role assigned to me was of the software testing. There I was

working as a member of the testing and support team. Various modules of the

software were given to me and I was analyzing those modules, my work was

not only limited to the testing I was also installing that software in various

computers to check whether that is working properly or not and also ensuring

that the software do not collapse.

I was involved in black box testing of the software and was not given the

permission to access the code of the software I was checking the overview of

the software checking for spelling mistakes and whether the tabs are doing the

assigned work or not.

As a member of the testing team my work was praised by the team leader and I

also learned a lot of new things which I previously did not know about.

I also learned how to install windows and how to work on Unix and linux.

Apart from this work I was also involved in proving support the employees in

case of system or software failure of any kind I was working on windows

servers and virtual windows and I also learned how to make the LAN cable.

8. FUTURE ENHANCEMENT

This help desk system is still in progress and will be completed very soon in the

due course of time. This system will provide a lot of relief and help to the

organization where ever it will be used. This software can tell about all the

systems connected over the network. Software will be installed on the server

and from there you can know about all the systems working and what all

software is installed on those computers. This software also provides the feature

of generating tokens to register your complaints and that directly sends an Email

to the one who can fix the problem. The software is designed to give relief from

manual work so this will give relax to the engineer.

Using this software we can save our time and also a lot of efforts that we have

to do in order to do the work manually lodging complaints will become very

easy if any system goes down it can very easily be recognized and the system

administrator will very easily maintain all the computers on the network and no

person will be able to use any unauthorized software on the system without

permission.

9. REFERENCES

1. Pressman, Roger S. Software Engineering. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009.

2. Whitten, Jeffrey and Bentley, Loonie. System Analysis and Design Methods. Irwin

Professional Pub. 2005

3. Schildt, Herbert. Complete Reference Java 2.0. McGraw-Hill Higher Education,

2009.

4. Brown, Don and Davis, Chad M. Struts 2 in Action. Manning Publications, 2008.

5. Bergsten, Hans. JavaServer Pages. O’Reilly Media, 2003

6. “V-Model (Software Development)” Sept 2011, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-

Model_(software_development)

7. “Help – Eclipse SDK” October 2011, <http://help.eclipse.org/galileo/index.jsp>

8. “Struts 2 Tutorial, Struts2 Examples, Apache Struts 2 Tutorial” Sept 2011,

<http://www.roseindia.net/struts/struts2>

9. “Struts2 Tutorial” Sept 2011, <http://www.vaannila.com/struts-2/struts-2-

tutorial/struts-2-tutorial>

10. “Core J2EE Patterns – Data Access Objects” Sept 2011,

<http://java.sun.com/blueprints/corej2eepatterns/Patterns/DataAccessObject.html>

11. “Business Object” September 2011, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_object>

12. “JSP Tutorials” October 2011, <http://www.roseindia.net/jsp/jsp>

13. “CSS Introduction” November 2011, <http://w3schools.com/css/css_intro>

14. “Software Testing Complete Guide” November 2011,http://www.softwaretestinghel

p.com

15. “Software Testing Genius” November 2011,

<http://www.softwaretestinggenius.com>