The Virtual Call Assistant - HP Kayak XM600 Administration Manual

8 Virtual Call Assistant

The Virtual Call Assistant

The Virtual Call Assistant
Currently under test and evaluation at HP, the Virtual Call Assistant (VCA) is
designed to provide a valuable e-DiagTools diagnostic aid for Help Desks and
Support Providers. It is a resident software program on the Help Desk PC (not the
managed PC) capable of automatically detecting and recognizing audio warning
signals emitted by the e-DiagTools Pre-Boot Diagnostics Capability. The encoded
signals from the remote PC indicate the nature of a failure state.
A warning buzzer signal from an embedded diagnostics microcontroller on the
motherboard of the HP PC (Vectra VL400 or later models) contains encoded
information on the state of the PC. When the end-user calls to report the problem,
the signal is transmitted by telephone from the buzzer on the motherboard of the
emitting PC. It is picked up by the diagnostics PC at the receiving end of the
telephone link, via a DynaMetric decoder fitted to the telephone receiver, and
connected to the microphone input of the PC's sound card. The DynaMetric Inc. web
page provides decoder information.
Helpdesk
The Virtual Call Assistant at the Helpdesk or Support site records the modulated
signal emitted by the PC buzzer, then analyzes this sound to detect the frequencies
which correspond to encoded binary data. The data is then decoded to obtain
information including:
The model of PC
•
The PC Serial Number
•
The type of failure detected.
•
The structure of the Virtual Call Assistant system is shown in the figure above.
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End User