Synchronized Resource Grouping
04/29/2009
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia 30332
E-Mail: sean.roberts@gatech.edu c.cepeda@gatech.edu
unmesh@gatech.edu

Syn-RG
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Introduction
Project Objectives
System Features & Functionality
System Architecture
System Evaluation & Testing
What We Learned
Future Work
Conclusion
References
Appendix - A
Appendix - B
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S YN-RG (Synchronized Resource Grouping) is a system that enables a group of administrators to intelligently and efficiently manage and process requests submitted by a community of users.
Users are able to submit and track the status of new requests, as well as view their old requests.
Administrators are able to provide solutions to user requests. Syn-RG allows users and administrators to send messages back and forth while working on requests, providing a direct line of communication between the person who submitted the request and the administrator handling it. This allows the administrator to better understand the user's problem, which can lead to a more effective and hopefully quicker solution.
The most intriguing feature of Syn-RG is the ability of users is to search the solutions of past requests.
If, for example an employee wanted to know how to access their work e-mail from home, they could search
Syn-RG’s Knowledge Base for the answer. If found, no new request would need to be submitted, providing faster results for the user, and reducing the amount of work for the administrators who handle requests.
While users can directly search the Knowledge Base, Syn-RG also automatically searches the Knowledge Base for similar requests every time a user submits a request. If any similar requests are found, the user has the option of viewing the solution to those requests instead of submitting their request.
Syn-RG is an Internet application written in object-oriented PHP and backed up by MYSQL database, making our project a high-level, portable, platform independent and cross browser compatible system that can easily be integrated into any business environment. Because Syn-RG can be accessed from anywhere via the Internet, this can increase productivity especially if different departments within a company are located in different geographical locations.
While Syn-RG can be used to track any type of requests, we have implemented and tested it as an IT helpdesk application. Our initial results were quite promising because the number of requests submitted decreased over time. Meaning the more we used Syn-RG, the more solutions were present in the Knowledge
Base, which meant people needed to submit fewer requests because Syn-RG automatically presented them with the solutions to their problems.
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Our goal is to provide an online request submission and tracking system. End-users will be able to submit and view the status of requests, and administrators will be able to provide solutions to open requests, as well as view the entire database of past requests. Not only will this make submitting requests easier for users, but this can also help administrators determine whether or not policy needs to be changed. If for example, a large number of IT requests are submitted by a particular group asking for access to a network drive, administrators may want to give the entire group access. These kinds of observations would be difficult to make if requests were made verbally or even through e-mail because requests would need to be viewed one at a time. But having all requests visible in one location makes drawing general conclusions regarding policy much easier.
We also wanted to make the request database searchable. We initially wanted to provide this functionality to help administrators who had to manage a large number of requests. However, we soon saw the potential searching the database could have for end-users as well. Administrators resolve requests by providing solutions to them (such as "you can change your password by going to www.gatech.edu/passwordreset"), which will allow end-users to search the request database for the solution to a particular problem before deciding to submit their request.
So for our project we wanted to provide the traditional features of an online request tracking system but with the added functionality that all requests that have been resolved are automatically added to what we call a "Knowledge Base." Also, because we wanted Syn-RG to prevent the submission of duplicate or similar requests (if for example, 5 users submitted a request about a particular printer in the CoC that won't print.), we also thought it would be a useful if our system returned potential solutions automatically whenever a user submits a request. This way, if a user submitted a "How do I change my password?" request without searching the Knowledge Base first, the solution "you can change your password by going to www.gatech.edu/passwordreset" would appear before the user decided whether or not they still wanted to submit the request.
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Inspiration/Basis for Improvement: RT: Request Tracker
The Georgia Tech College of Computing Helpdesk uses the open source request tracking system RT: Request
Tracker to process their IT requests 7 . However RT Tracker has a number of limitations:
•
Strictly an administrative tool: Users cannot track the status of their requests.
• RT does not keep a database of resolved requests: Once an administrator finishes a request, that request is removed from the system.
• Because resolved requests are not stored, their is no method for storing the solution to these requests:
The CoC Helpdesk gets around this by keeping track of request solutions separately and putting them in FAQs on their website 10 .
The Goal for our project was to address each of these issues in the following ways:
1] End-User Support: Syn-RG allows end-users not only to submit requests, but also to view the status of those requests.
2] Complete Request Database: Syn-RG keeps track of not only currently open requests, but also resolved
(meaning completed) requests as well. We believe this is beneficial to both administrators and end-users.
Administrators can look back over all old requests to look for trends that might be solved by changing policy.
If, for example a lot of users in a particular department are requesting access to a server, an administrator might find it beneficial to change the IT policy and allow anyone in that department access to the server. Endusers will also find the ability to view their past requests beneficial because they can go back and look at the request solutions. If a user put in a request asking how to print to an envelope in Microsoft Word a year ago, but forgot how to do it, they could simply look up the solution to that old request.
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3] Searchable Knowledge Base: When an administrator sets a request's status to resolved, that request will automatically be entered into Syn-RG's Knowledge Base. Administrators and end-users can search the
Knowledge Base to see if there are any old solutions to their current problem. Because all request solutions are automatically stored in the Knowledge Base, an administrator does not have to do any additional work
(like the CoC does when writing FAQs based on their requests) to make the solution available to other users.
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Syn-RG provides the following functionality:
1] Request Submission: When a user submits a new request, that request is added to the system with a status of “New.” The status will remain new until an administrator views the request, at which point the status will change to "Open." A screenshot of the request submission page is shown below:
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2] Request flow: Once the request is submitted, it can be viewed by an administrator and acted upon. The status of the request can be updated by the administrator while it is being processed. On completion of a request, its solution is automatically added to the Knowledge Base.
3] Usability: The design of the application is such that it is easy to navigate and can be used by non-technical users.
4] Priorities and categories: When the user issues a request, he can select a priority (such as “low” or
“urgent”) for his request, which can help administrators prioritize requests. Also, the user selects a category
(such as “hardware” or ”software”) before submitting the request. This helps the administrators assign a person with a particular expertise to a given request.
5] Knowledge Base: All resolved requests are automatically added to the Knowledge Base. Users may search the Knowledge Base for solutions to their current problem.
6] Search Algorithm: This algorithm parses through the Knowledge Base searching for matches to a given user query. The search algorithm is also integrated into the request submission process. When a user submits a request, Syn-RG automatically searches the Knowledge Base for similar requests, and allows a user to view any matching solutions before deciding if they still want to submit their request. (For more information on how
Syn-RG's search algorithm works, see the section "What We Learned").
7] Administration and management: Administrators are responsible for user management and request processing. They are also responsible for providing solutions to requests they are currently working on. In addition to creating regular users, they can also create new administrators. Administrators have complete authority to delete other users from the system and edit a user’s personal information.
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User Registration: New user accounts can only be added by administrators. The first time a user logs in after their account is created they have the option to change the default password given to them. A screenshot of the user creation page is shown below:
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The most interesting features of our project are related to the Knowledge Base:
1) Search Capability: We believe the ability to search the Knowledge Base is a great feature of Syn-RG. The idea of being able to find the solutions to requests quickly instead of having to wait for an administrator to provide you with one is really appealing.
2) Reduced Administrative Work: Because solutions to resolved requests are automatically added to the
Knowledge Base, the administrators who process Syn-RG requests don't have to do any additional work to make a solution available to all the users of the system. By solving a given request for a particular user, they are also automatically providing solutions to anyone who may have that same request in the future. This can cut down on the number of requests submitted, which can also decrease the workload for administrators.
3) Usefulness (Utility) Grows Over Time: The more solutions there are in the Knowledge Base, the more useful it can be to users. While it may start out as a simple request tracking system, as more solutions are added to the Knowledge Base, users may end up using Syn-RG more for looking up answers than submitting requests. In fact, the ultimate goal of Syn-RG would be that users no longer have to submit requests because all possible solutions would already be in the Knowledge Base. Although this is realistically not possible, we'd like to think that given enough time Syn-RG could drastically lower the administrative staff's workload. (We obviously didn't have time to do something like this, but an interesting evaluation of our project would be to compare the number of requests submitted when Syn-RG was first deployed at a business with the number of requests submitted over a year)
We also like our project because it has real-world applications. We could see Syn-RG being used by businesses to track requests. While there are certainly modifications we would like to make if we decide to make our project available for use, overall we think that Syn-RG would be very helpful to companies because it can provide a single place where users could lookup answers to questions they have.
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1] Linux Apache MY-SQL PHP (LAMP) ARCHITECTURE:
Web Client (Browser)
Internet cloud
(PHP 5)
My-SQL
Database
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Apache Web Server

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Apache Web Server: We decided to use Apache because it is a free and secure web server. Also, because it is open source, there are a number of modules for Apache that provide a variety of features such as server-side programming support and authentication schemes. Syn-RG uses Apache primarily to serve both static and dynamic Web content.
MYSQL Database: We use MYSQL database, as it is open source, stable and secure. Also, MYSQL is popular for web applications and works very well with PHP. Tools like PHPMyAdmin make database management with
MYSQL very easy.
PHP5: PHP runs on Apache web server, taking PHP code as its input and creating web pages as output. PHP works well with MYSQL and Apache. Also after deciding not to implement the project in Ruby on Rails as we had initially intended, we felt PHP was the best scripting language available.
Client Browser: A terminal with a web browser is all a user needs to interact with Syn-RG. Our web application is completely cross browser compatible. The browsers we specifically tested Syn-RG with are as follows:
Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera (from left to right).
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User Steve is having a problem with his monitor and decides to submit a request asking for help.
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Before the request is submitted, the system finds a similar request.
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Steve decides to view the similar request instead of submitting his, and after looking at the solution, he tries it himself and it works, so he does not need to submit a request.
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Steve forgets his password, so he decides to submit another request.
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The system comes up with a similar request, but since Steve doesn't have a Mac, he doesn't think that request applies, so he decides to submit his request.
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An administrator logs in and sees Steve's new request "I forgot my password."
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The administrator looks at Steve's request, gives a solution to Steve and changes the request's status from "New" to "Open."
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Steve logs back in, sees that his request is "Open," and looks at it to see the administrator's response.
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Steve tries the solution, sends a reply saying it worked, and then sets the request's status to "Resolved."
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A new user Amruta forgot her password and decides to search for a solution before trying to send a request.
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The first request Amruta's search returns is the request Steve just submitted.
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Amruta views the solution to the request Steve submitted, and as a result, is able to find out how to reset her password without submitting a new request.
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We tried to acquire some tickets from the CoC Helpdesk, but we couldn’t get that data because RT
Request Tracker doesn’t maintain a database of the requests submitted. So our testing phase started with populating the database with some real-world IT requests. We referred to several technical forums and blogs 1,2,3,4,5,6 to get the most common real-world requests. Then the next task was to populate our Knowledge
Base with solutions to the requests we entered. After the fake requests and their solutions had been entered, we ran our search algorithm to check its efficiency. The search algorithm was subjected to several similar and different queries and then the results were checked as to whether or not we felt the similarity rating returned by the search algorithm was accurate. Also, queries with some general English words were given to check whether the search algorithm actually ignored common words like we designed it to (For more information on how Syn-RG's search algorithm works, see the section "What We Learned").
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Below are screenshots of some test cases we ran. Each request is given a similarity rating stating how similar that request is to either the new request a user is attempting to submit or to a search string a user entered.
Based on the similarity rating, up to 5 similar requests are returned.
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In the above image we can see that the user is searching the Knowledge Base for the phrase: "monitor turns off.” The first matching request that is returned has a similarity score of 162.5 and seems to be a fairly accurate description of a typical problem describing a monitor turning off. The second request regarding purchasing a Dell monitor has a score 81.81, but it doesn’t seem to be as relevant as the first one, hence the lower score. However, the third request with a score of 55.55 that discusses a monitor going into power saving mode seems more relevant to the search string than the second entry about purchasing a monitor. The higher score for the second entry can be attributed to the fact that the second request uses the word
“monitor” (which we are trying to match) 3 times, while the third entry uses it only twice. So as you can see there is still some room for improvement with our search algorithm.
Here are screenshots of two more test cases for our search algorithm (NOTE: The similarity score does not actually show up in real system use, we just have it shown here for testing purposes):
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We also analyzed how the number of requests we submitted went down as the Knowledge Base grew. This is, in fact, our ultimate goal: as more requests are submitted, the number of future requests that are submitted should go down because more solutions will be found prior to submission.
The following graph presents an estimation that we extrapolated from our tests that shows how the number of requests submitted will decrease over time:
As you can see, based on our estimation, the number of requests submitted per day will decrease as Syn-RG is used for a longer period of time.
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1] Ruby on Rails (RoR) : We had initially planned on developing Syn-RG using Ruby on Rails, a new web development language. We spent several weeks learning RoR before starting our project, and we actually spent over 2 weeks trying to develop Syn-RG in RoR. Designing individual components (such as a login system) was very simple, but getting different components to work together proved impossible for us. So, although we really wanted to learn Ruby on Rails for this project, we ultimately decided to go with PHP5. We learned that it was not a good idea to use a completely new programming language no one in our group had experience with to develop our project.
2] Search Algorithm: Because being able to search the Knowledge Base is such a large part of our project, we spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to implement the search algorithm. Ultimately we decided on counting the number of "key words" (non-simple words, as in not "a", "and", "the", etc.) in a given search string. Then we determined the number of matching key words in each request in the Knowledge Base. The more key words that match, the higher the similarity rating is for two requests (or one request and a search string).
We later improved upon this algorithm by taking into account "extra" key words. Meaning if a request matches all 5 key words in a search string, but the request itself has 10 key words (5 extra), it will be less relevant to the search string than a request that matches all 5 but has only 6 key words. We played around with the number for the coefficient that we use to subtract from the similarity rating based on the number of extra key words, and we determined that the factor should grow with the number of requests in the
Knowledge Base. This is because we believe that if there are only 30 requests in the Knowledge Base, then a solution with one extra key word should be more relevant than if there were 100 requests in the Knowledge
Base and a particular solution had one extra key word.
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If we had a large number of requests (a couple hundred or maybe even 1000) we would have liked to add some of the features of the searching algorithms we discussed in class to our Knowledge Base search algorithm. We were seriously considering applying weight values to the keywords that show up frequently in the Knowledge Base (if, for example, the word "password" appeared in 50 different requests in the Knowledge
Base, it would have a different weight assigned to it than "printer" which was only present in 10). We were initially considering using the TFIDF algorithm 8 we discussed in class to determine how similar certain words were, but the full implementation was deemed too much work given the small number of requests we thought we could produce by the end of the project. So we took some ideas from the TFIDF algorithm to create our current algorithm.
3] Simulation & Testing: We had hoped to use the CoC’s actual IT requests to populate and test our system.
However, because RT tracker does not maintain a database of the previously submitted requests (which means the CoC could benefit from using Syn-RG!), we had to come up with our own requests. This was very limiting for a number of reasons. Because the heart of our project is the Knowledge Base, which relies on administrators providing solutions, not only did we have to come up with fake requests, we also had to come up with fake answers to those requests. So it took a fair amount of time to populate the Knowledge Base with solutions to several day-to-day problems before we could test the search algorithm. On the bright side, because we had to submit and solve requests like actual users of Syn-RG would, this allowed us to test the functionality of the entire system while we focused on testing the search algorithm.
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If we decide to continue this project in the future, we would like to add the following features:
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User ratings for solutions in Knowledge Base: Users would be able to give a rating to a particular solution depending on whether or not they thought it was useful. Then we would adapt our search algorithm to consider a request's rating when comparing it to a search string. This would allow users to determine what solutions were the most helpful, and it would also let our search algorithm return the most useful solutions first.
•
Apply clearance levels to requests and their solutions: It would be nice if we could apply clearance levels
(such as "Top Secret" or "Classified" or perhaps even department like "Only Managers") to prevent certain requests from being searchable. This would be useful if a solution described how to grant access to a restricted server that only certain users should be able to access. We certainly wouldn't want this solution to be available to everyone.
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Improve Search Algorithm: We would like to improve our search algorithm so it provides more accurate measurements of similarity. Right now we just use common words to determine the similarity between a given request and search string, which means some requests that contain the same word over and over again
(like the "Dell Monitor" request in our test scenario) will have a higher similarity rating than requests that only use the word once. We would like to investigate some search algorithm techniques we learned in class (such as TFDIF 8 ) and use them to improve Syn-RG's search algorithm.
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Overall we are very satisfied with our project. Despite some initial frustrations (spending weeks learning Ruby on Rails only to use PHP, or the fact that we had to come up with all of the test data ourselves), we believe Syn-RG is a very functional and unique request tracking system. While there will always be room for improvement (such as the search algorithm), we believe in its current state Syn-RG could be used by any business to provide faster solutions to user requests, as well as cut down on the amount of requests the administrators must handle. We are considering asking the Georgia Tech College of Computing if they would like us to install Syn-RG to increase the productivity of their helpdesk. Not only would it be interesting to actually implement Syn-RG in a real-world setting, but the availability of massive amounts of real requests and solutions would allow us to improve our project, making it an even better request tracking system.
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[1] Tech Support forums
http://www.techsupportforum.com/
[2]Tek- Tips
http://www.tek-tips.com/
[3]MSDN forums
http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/default.aspx
[4]Microsoft technical Blogs
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/PortalHome.mspx
[5]Marks Blog
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/
[6]Hive Logic
http://hivelogic.com/articles/
[7]RT: Request Tracker
http://blog.bestpractical.com/rt/
[8]Improved Annotation of the Blogopshere via Autotagging and Hierarchical Clustering
Christopher H. Brooks, Computer Science Department, University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton St. San Francisco, CA 94117-1080, cbrooks@cs.usfca.edu
Nancy Montanez Computer Science Department, University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton St. San Francisco, CA 94117-1080, nmontane@cs.usfca.edu
[9]Web Performance: Metrics, Models & Methods
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~lingliu/courses/cs8803/09Spring/lectures.htm
[10] Georgia Tech CoC Helpdesk FAQs
https://support.cc.gatech.edu/support-tools/faq
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Step 1: Downloading & Installing:
After downloading simply type in the following commands:
1. Go to a Linux shell and to login as the system administrator (root), type the following and enter the root password when prompted for: su
2. Extract the downloaded archive file to /opt: tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz -C /opt
XAMPP is now installed at the /opt/lampp directory.
Step 2: Starting XAMPP
To start XAMPP simply call this command:
/opt/lampp/lampp start
You should now see something like this on your screen:
Starting XAMPP 1.7.1...
LAMPP: Starting Apache...
LAMPP: Starting MySQL...
LAMPP started.
Apache and MySQL are now running.
If you get any error messages please take a look at the Linux FAQ http://tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/
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Step 3: Verify the Installation
To verify the installation, type in the following in your browser. Make sure no other web server is running on the machine, which might clash with the XAMPP web server. http://localhost
Now you should see the start page of XAMPP containing some links to check the status of the installed software and some small programming examples.
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Step 4: Stopping XAMPP
To stop XAMPP simply call this command:
/opt/lampp/lampp stop
You should now see:
Stopping LAMPP 1.7.1...
LAMPP: Stopping Apache...
LAMPP: Stopping MySQL...
LAMPP stopped.
And XAMPP for Linux is stopped.
Step 5:Uninstall
To uninstall XAMPP just type in this command: rm -rf /opt/lampp
The installation and uninstallation procedure ends here.
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START AND STOP PARAMETERS ( For version 0.9.5 and later)
Parameter Description start stop
Starts XAMPP.
Stops XAMPP. restart Stops and starts XAMPP. startapache Starts only the Apache. startssl Starts the Apache SSL support. This command activates the SSL support permanently, e.g. if you restarts XAMPP in the future SSL will stay activated. startmysql Starts only the MySQL database. startftp Starts the ProFTPD server. Via FTP you can upload files for your web server (user "nobody", password "lampp"). This command activates the ProFTPD permanently, e.g. if you restarts XAMPP in the future FTP will stay activated. stopapache Stops the Apache. stopssl Stops the Apache SSL support. This command deactivates the SSL support permanently, e.g. if you restarts XAMPP in the future SSL will stay deactivated. stopmysql Stops the MySQL database. stopftp Stops the ProFTPD server. This command deactivates the ProFTPD permanently, e.g. if you restarts XAMPP in the security future FTP will stay deactivated.
Starts a small security check program.
IMPORTANT FILES AND DIRECTORIES
File/Directory Purpose
/opt/lampp/bin/
/opt/lampp/htdocs/
/opt/lampp/etc/httpd.conf
The XAMPP commands home. /opt/lampp/bin/mysql calls for example the MySQL monitor.
The Apache DocumentRoot directory.
The Apache configuration file.
/opt/lampp/etc/my.cnf
/opt/lampp/etc/php.ini
The MySQL configuration file.
The PHP configuration file.
/opt/lampp/etc/proftpd.conf The ProFTPD configuration file. (since 0.9.5)
/opt/lampp/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php The phpMyAdmin configuration file.
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Prerequisites:
- Apache or any other web server.
- MySQL database.
- PHP version5
OR
- XAMP/WAMP/LAMP
Step1: Database Setup
Unzip all the files in some folder (say SYNRG).
To connect to the database edit the file named dbconection.php
There are 4 main parameters:
$database_server = "localhost";
$database_username = anamed0_cs8803";
$database_password = "camilo";
$database_name = "anamed0_synrg"; database_server=> The machine name on which you are setting up the software.
database_username=>username of the root user of the database.
database_password=>Root user’s password.
database_name=>name of the database to be used with this software.
You got to edit these parameters in order to connect to fresh database with new credentials.
Step 2:Populate the Database
Refer to the file named “Syn-RG_Database_Dump” for the queries related to creation of tables pertaining to
SYN_RG. You can simply copy paste all the queries from this file in to SQL editor .At this stage you should have all the necessary tables in place.
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Step 3:Verification & logging in
If everything has been setup properly open your favorite browser and type in http://localhost/ and you should see the login page of SYN-RG like the one shown below:
On this screen you can type in username as admin
and password as camilo
to login.
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