A JADE-LEAP based application to Support Team-based Job Management in a Telecommunications Service Environment Habin Lee and John Shepherdson {ha.lee,

Agenda Mobile Workflow Management Issues Requirements for Mobile Workflow MAS as an enabler of enterprise mobilization mPower Approach Conclusions Demonstration

Mobile Workforce Management Issues BT has 25,000 Engineers performing 150,000 installation and repair tasks each day in the UK A centralized workflow system is scheduling all the tasks based on estimated travelling and task execution time - “Why should I wait for at home from 9:00 to 5:00” (real time progress tracking) - “They rarely arrive on time even if they promise” (exception handling) - “They changed the delivery date three times over four months” (Integration with legacy systems) -“Somebody visited my home three times just to replace a simple component” (KM / stock mgt) Typical Customer Issues - “Why can’t I ask the delivery driver about the Company’s products?” (Knowledge retrieval)

Requirements for mobile workforce management Flexibility to change job ownership in exceptional cases Facilitating knowledge sharing among engineers to reduce re-work rate Integration with heterogeneous legacy systems to provide engineers with all necessary knowledge Automated real time job progress tracking

MAS as an enabler of enterprise mobilization Purely distributed system (scalable for differing sizes of workforce) Well known interaction protocols can be used to coordinate distributed mobile workers Agents can learn preferences of each worker and provide customized services Autonomous response to structured conversation components –Where are you ? / Which job are you working on ? / what’s your next job location ? etc. Wrapper agents integrate legacy systems

mPower: A mobile CSCW System A smart agent on a mobile device that - Provides mobile worker with services by executing pluggable coordination components (C-COMs) - Configures user interface and service access based on device type and user role - Features (semi) autonomous personal agents To increase team interaction, empower the individual and enhance the customer experience

Dynamic service provision and composition Firewall Resource DB (People & Job) Service Librarian Agent Workflow Agent WfMS KM System ….. …. …….. ….. …. …….. ….. File System Web pages Smart Agent Smart Agent Register service and component (C-COM) Device profile / user role KMS Gateway Agent GPRS over VPN Peer-to-Peer Coordination Knowledge exchange Job trade Swap Shift / Leave

Service Library Travel management Plan Route / Replan Route Estimate Route Cost Knowledge Management Find Expert Find Relevant Information Update Knowledge Base Attendance Management And more Decentralised work co-ordination Trade Work Request / Swap Shift Trade Overtime / Cancel Leave Bookings Call For Overtime Registration Request Expertise Make Collective Decision Request Leave Change

Customer Experience Prior to Engineer visit (self service) –Log job via Web Specify ring ahead number and time threshold Receive appointment time – Track progress via Web Engineer’s name and proximity Dynamically re-assign to a nearest engineer in case of exceptional cases (Feedback is sent to the customer automatically)

Customer Experience During visit (via Engineer’s mobile terminal) –Request and be given other product and service details –Place orders and be given appointments –Agree (via electronic signature) e.g. time related charges; consent to dig. On completion (via Engineer’s mobile terminal) –Customer Satisfaction survey (electronic signature)

Conclusions Increased flexibility on mobile workflow management via cooperation of multiple agents Increased customer satisfaction via agile workforce management Exploitation of multi agent technology for mobile CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) Validation via field trials –Technical feasibility –Usability –Business benefits

What Next? Context Understanding for Work Milestone Management Device Adaptation and Dynamic Device Change Voice-Text Integrated Human-Agent Interaction

Context Understanding for Work Milestone Management GUI Usage Log Services used Location trace Job schedule / due date He is executing Job2 with probability of xxx

Device Adaptation and Dynamic Device Change C-COM Library PDA …. Device profile MobilePhone …. Device profile GUI & Service Mediator C-COM Library

Voice-Text Integrated Human-Agent Interaction Voice Input List of possible answers -Accept -Reject -Defer TTS Do you want to accept a job offer? Please answer with one of.. Job Offer

Selected References 1.H. Lee, P. Mihailescu and J. Shepherdson, Multi-Agent Technology as an enabler of Computer Supported Cooperative Work for the Mobile Workforce, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Forthcoming, September H. Lee, P. Mihailescu, and J. Shepherdson, mPower: A Reusable Framework for Building Multi-Agent Systems to Automate Business Processes, BT Technology Journal, 21 (4), , Oct mPower: A Reusable Framework for Building Multi-Agent Systems to Automate Business Processes 3.H. Lee, J. Shepherdson, P. Mihailescu, A Multi-agent System for Team-based Job Management in Telecommunications Service Environment. Special Issue on Jade of Telecom Italia Journal Exp, 3 (3), , Sep A Multi-agent System for Team-based Job Management in Telecommunications Service Environment 4.H. Lee, P. Mihailescu, and J. Shepherdson, Conversational Component-based Open Multi-agent Architecture for Flexible Information Trade, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), 2782, , 2003.Conversational Component-based Open Multi-agent Architecture for Flexible Information Trade 5.Berger, M., Buckland, B., Bouzid, M., Lee, H., Lhuillier, N., Olpp, D., Picault, J., and Shepherdson, J., An Approach to Agent-based Service Composition and it's Application to Mobile Business Processes. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 2(3), , 2003.An Approach to Agent-based Service Composition and it's Application to Mobile Business Processes 6.H. Lee, S. Case, and J. Shepherdson, Agent Mediated Knowledge Management for Mobile Workforces in a Telecommunications Service Provision and Maintenance Domain, In Proceedings of ECAI workshop on Agent Mediated Knowledge Management, August 22-27, 2004, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (Spain). 7.P. Mihailescu, J. Shepherdson, P. Marrow, L. Lee, and H. Lee, MAS platforms as an enabler of enterprise mobilisation: The state of the art, In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man & Cybernetics, The Hague, Netherland, October 10-13, 2004.

mPower: Demonstration

Coordination centric mPower Demo Job DB Team Leader Team Member A Team Member B 1: Job Notification (new or urgent job) 2: Job Publication 3: Job Trade (mini) 5:Job Update/ Closure 4: Job Trade (maxi) All coordination via C-COMs