Abstract

Telecommunication is fast changing. New products and services are constantly introduced. Due to competition in this field, the time gap between the conception of a product/service to its deployment should be cut as small as possible. In addition users do not like to make too much effort to learn about new product/services. A software agent that can monitor the actions of a user and make proactive suggestions would be desirable. It is in this context, the present report is developed. One of the problems in the use of agents in Telecommunication is: "How to offer "appropriate" proactive suggestions?" For a suggestion to be appropriate, it should be consistent with the previous actions taken by the user, the suggestion should be event-based, and it should be timely-based. A software tool is developed as part of this major report so that it can be used in two different ways in solving this problem. The first way is for researchers to simulate an agent's competency for offering appropriate suggestions to end-users. The second way is for researchers to demonstrate to vendors how an agent can develop proactive suggestions to be offered to users. The goal of the software tool developed in this report is for researchers to study different strategies in offering appropriate suggestions to end-users, and demonstrate their outcomes to potential vendors who might be interested in such a product. The software tool is called FATMA (Futuristic Automated Telecommunication Management Agent) and is implemented using CLIPS, C, and TCL/TK.