Combination system for proactively and reactively maintaining telephone network facilities in a public switched telephone system

Claim 1

In an administration system for a public switched telephone network which includes an attendant station for receiving service requests and collecting customer information, credit verification service order processor (SOP) for creating and distributing service orders for processing by downstream processing systems such as Service Order Analysis and Control (SOAC) system, a Computer System for Mainframe Operations (COSMOS) system, SWITCH system, Loop Facility Assignment and Control System (LFACS) system, and Adjunct Processor (AP) having storage for storing data including Living Unit (LU) data, network facility data and Telephone Number (TN) data, a first test system testing a communication line in a communication cable associated with the customer in accordance with a first test producing trouble indicators indicating a potentially defective communication line, a second test system testing groups of the trouble indicators associated with the communication line in accordance with a second test, and a data processor generating an end to end description of the communication line to be tested, prioritizing the groups that are potentially defective indicating the potentially defective communication line generating prioritized groups, and generating a report to be used for examining the potentially defective communication line using the prioritized groups, a method of proactively and reactively analyzing the working status of customer network facilities in response to a customer request reporting a customer trouble, comprising the steps of: (a) receiving the customer request; (b) retrieving related customer profile information including at least one of billing, service order, circuit test history, and trouble history; (c) obtaining a description of the customer trouble and entering a trouble type associated therewith; (d) building a trouble report; (e) testing the communication line and generating test results; (f) determining, responsive to first criteria, whether additional information is needed, or whether the trouble report can be closed out, or whether the trouble report should be dispatched to a customer work group, and if so, transmitting the trouble report for review by the customer work group; (g) transmitting the trouble report to the customer work group using trouble routing criteria, mapping the trouble report to a maintenance area, determining a trouble priority, and assigning a trouble report status; (h) grouping at least one of related open work requests and proactively determined troubles with the trouble report based on grouping rules including similarity of trouble, similarity of geographic area, and available time, the proactively determined troubles being determined in accordance with the following steps: (h1) performing a first level test of the communication line in the communication cable associated with the customer producing trouble indicators indicating a potentially defective communication line; (h2) filtering the trouble indicators from predetermined communication services associated with the communication line that provide potentially false trouble indicators producing filtered trouble indicators; (h3) generating a list of the filtered trouble indicators to be considered when determining whether the communication line is potentially defective; (h4) generating an end to end description of the communication line to be tested; (h5) grouping the filtered trouble indicators that have common network elements in groups; (h6) prioritizing the groups for performing a second level test of the communication line; (h7) testing the groups prioritized for the communication line; (h8) discarding the groups that are in a satisfactory status responsive to predetermined criteria; (h9) prioritizing the groups that are potentially defective indicating the potentially defective communication line generating prioritized groups of the proactively determined troubles; (i) building a work load for a technician responsive to the related open work requests, the trouble report, the proactively determined troubles and technician information including work schedule, job type, work areas, and job skills; (j) accessing information stored in operation support systems including at least one of the SOP, the SOAC system, the COSMOS system, the SWITCH system, the LFACS system, the AP, the first test system, the second test system, and the data processor as needed; (k) repairing and testing the communication line associated with the trouble report to verify that the communication line is working; (1) notifying the customer that the trouble report has been resolved and the trouble is closed out; (m) resolving the at least one of the related open work requests and the proactively determined troubles; (n) generating a completion message responsive to said repairing step (k) and said resolving step (m); and (o) transmitting the completion message to at least one of the SOP, the SOAC system, the COSMOS system, the SWITCH system, the LFACS system, the AP, the first test system, the second test system, and the data processor as needed.