Condition Graph Evaluation for Customer Support Ticket Triggers
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Solution Overview
Problem
Customer-support systems face inefficiencies in evaluating trigger conditions for business rules that modify customer-support tickets, leading to slowed processing and dissatisfaction among large customers due to complex evaluations of numerous triggers.
Innovation Solution
A system that evaluates condition nodes in condition graphs using range-searching operations and preprocessing to identify critical nodes, converting condition graphs into linear trigger paths, and applying triggers in precedence ordering, with binary searches for quick evaluation and unsatisfiable trigger paths being skipped, thereby speeding up the evaluation process.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple triggers with complex conditions are applied to tickets, then the system can handle diverse business rules, but the evaluation time increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the evaluation process by identifying critical condition nodes that must be satisfied for a trigger to fire. By dividing the complex condition evaluation into discrete critical nodes, the system can efficiently determine trigger applicability without evaluating all conditions for all triggers, thus reducing overall evaluation time while maintaining support for multiple diverse triggers.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preprocessing to identify critical condition nodes before actual ticket evaluation occurs. This preliminary action creates a structured representation of which conditions are essential for each trigger, enabling the system to quickly assess trigger applicability during runtime without undergoing complete condition evaluation, thereby reducing evaluation time while preserving adaptability.
2Reliability
If comprehensive condition evaluation is performed for all triggers, then accurate business rule application is ensured, but processing speed decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the critical condition nodes from the full set of trigger conditions. By taking out and focusing solely on these essential conditions, the system maintains reliable trigger evaluation (since critical conditions determine trigger firing) while significantly reducing processing time by avoiding evaluation of non-critical conditions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different evaluation depths to different triggers based on their critical conditions. Instead of uniformly evaluating all conditions for all triggers, the system selectively evaluates only the critical conditions that determine trigger applicability, thereby maintaining accuracy where needed while improving overall processing speed.
3Productivity
If preprocessing is performed to identify critical nodes, then evaluation speed improves, but initial system setup complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preprocessing to identify critical condition nodes before runtime evaluation. This preliminary action, while adding initial setup complexity, enables significantly faster evaluation speed during actual ticket processing by creating a structured representation of critical conditions that can be quickly assessed without complete condition evaluation.
Data Source
AI summary
When a customer-support ticket is created or updated in an online customer-support system, the system applies a set of triggers, which modify the ticket based on business rules, to the ticket, wherein each trigger performs actions that modify the ticket when conditions for parameters associated with the ticket are satisfied. During this process, the system evaluates condition nodes in condition graphs for the set of triggers, wherein a condition graph for a trigger is a directed graph comprised of condition nodes that specify conditions on one or more parameters associated with the ticket. During this evaluation, if a valid path through a condition graph comprising satisfied condition nodes is discovered, the system fires a trigger associated with the condition graph. Also, while evaluating the condition nodes, the system performs one or more range-searching operations to quickly evaluate conditions for frequently occurring parameters in the condition graphs.