Specifications

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Buyers Guide 1997/1998 79
Knowledge Builder: Produces a cus-
tomer support knowledge base contain-
ing company’s solutions expertise.
Knowledge Builder, with Expert
Reasoning, allows the author to easily
capture and organize the support recom-
mendations by simply recording prob-
lems, causes, solutions, and questions. It
features a visual drag-and-drop interface.
Web Authoring: Allows users to
modify the knowledge base through
their Web browsers.
Web Advisor Escalation: Enables
users to send an e-mail to support per-
sonnel if a problem cannot be resolved.
All session information is automatically
collected and forwarded with the e-mail.
International Language: Supports
English, French, German, Spanish, and
Dutch languages.
OPERATIONAL TESTING
Although we were able to create a
small knowledge base using the
Knowledge Builder, we decided to base
most of our review on the product’s
sample knowledge base, which is
called Printer. Designing and imple-
menting a robust knowledge base goes
far beyond the tools that are used to
create it. The knowledge base must be
designed to anticipate every question
thrown at it and manage every conceiv-
able permutation. Thus, creating a
knowledge base takes careful up-front
planning and structuring. Such prelimi-
naries can consume weeks or even
months of design time.
Web Advisor
Web Advisor is the gateway between
the Web server and the knowledge
base. When the Web server receives a
request from a user’s Web browser, it
uses CGI (Webcgi.exe) to deliver the
request to Web Advisor.
In response, Web Advisor dynami-
cally creates a new page, which is
based on an HTML templates. Then, it
fills in the replacement fields within the
template with values obtained from the
system parameters, the initialization
files, and the knowledge base. The Web
page contains the information users
need to approach the resolution of their
problems. This information may be
conveyed via graphics and multimedia.
Web Advisor sends the page back to the
Web browser through the Web server.
Users can monitor Web Advisor activ-
ity by using the Web Advisor window
(Figure 27). The screen has three tabs:
the Request tab, which contains the cur-
rent session description; the Contacts
tab, which shows a range of current and
recent activities; and the Messages tab,
which shows the most recent errors and
warnings on Web advisor. The user can
customize this screen to show notices,
warnings, and errors.
Unfortunately, there was no online
help available for Web Advisor. We
couldn’t figure out whether the help file
was corrupt or if it hadn’t been installed
from the CD ROM.
Knowledge Builder
Knowledge Builder is used to create
and maintain all the knowledge bases
used by Web Advisor. From here, you
can create a new knowledge base, make
all the associated templates, and finally
package it for use by Web Advisor.
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