@ATS(TM) (Assisted Technical Support) was supposed to solve only one small, though certainly compelling, problem--helping NCSA Mosaic software support consultants offer quicker and better answers to the large number of email queries that come to them every day. But, as John Towns says, "It grew to be much more than intended."

Towns is Technical Program Manager for Consulting Services at NCSA. When Mosaic consultants were moved from the Software Development Division to Consulting Services in early 1995, the problem of how to handle all the Mosaic email fell to his group.

Tools and methods that worked for a reasonable flow of questions were not working anymore. The consultants had been reading the mail with Elm, a respected mail reader that was just not designed for multiple users. Assigning and routing mail, keeping documentation updated and organized, and training and supervising new consultants all took time away from answering email. And the delay between the questions and their answers was too long and growing longer. Graduate student and consultant Ben Johnson volunteered to tackle the problem. A 1994 St. Olaf College graduate, Johnson had worked at NCSA since August 1994 while studying for a masters in computer science at UIUC. With lots of input, comments, and discussion with Towns and the consulting group, Johnson wrote all of the code for @ATS. Version 1.0, written in Perl with some C, was finished in August 1995.

The result was an interactive Web-based system with three basic components: a document management system to organize and maintain lists of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and other documents; a search engine, called AskMe, for searching that information; and the Electronic Hotline, which uses the other two subsystems to automatically propose answers to incoming mail.

It works like this. Information is entered into the system in small, discrete portions of HTML-coded text, like one paragraph of a document or one question and its answer from a FAQ. The author then assigns a few keywords to each entry. The Document Structuring System (DSS) then formats the text into a standard structure and generates a table of contents for all the entries in a document. AskMe, the search engine, uses a thesaurus of keywords and synonyms to find possible answers to questions posed in natural language, such as "How do I configure Mosaic to use different image viewers than the default?"

The end result is that when a consultant sits down to answer a question, @ATS automatically presents a choice of possible answers. The consultant can select those answers that work by clicking on associated check boxes, use AskMe to look for other possibilities, and edit the results into a finished reply.

@ATS is a success at solving the problem it was designed for. Consultants for the X Window System, Macintosh, and MS Windows versions of Mosaic are now answering as many as 300 email queries a day, at least twice what they could handle before @ATS.

"It has also turned out to be a great learning tool," says Towns. He explains that when new consultants come into the group, they may not know all the answers, but they do have the background to recognize the right answers when they see them. With experience, consultants have more answers and more information resources at hand for the answers they don't have. Many of the Mosaic consultants are students, working just a few hours a week, often for only a semester or two. The experience they gather has to be gathered quickly. @ATS makes it possible for new consultants to start out a mouse click or two away from all of the experience and expertise that went into the documents in the first place.

If that were the end of the story, @ATS would still be a useful and elegant solution to a problem that is not unique to Mosaic consultants. Although it was not designed to be a full help-desk package--it has no problem-tracking functions, for example--@ATS could be useful in all kinds of support operations, perhaps as a front-end to such a package.

But as consultants began to use the system, more and more possible uses became apparent. @ATS has several features that make it ideal as a general technical document management system. In adding new information to the DSS, authors can concentrate on content and leave all of the structural issues to @ATS. Because new questions and answers can be added almost as easily as they could be retrieved, FAQs very nearly assemble themselves. The automatic handling of standard features also makes the system useful for generating and organizing presentation slides.

Several NCSA groups (for example, Technology Management and HDF support) are now using @ATS to manage their Web pages. @ATS automates structure and style elements and provides other useful features such as built-in navigation buttons and context-sensitive help.

With the addition of code to provide ASCII, LaTeX, and PostScript output from the HTML source--now in its early stages of development--@ATS looks promising as a solution to the problems of maintaining technical documentation in both printed and online forms. Because the procedures for producing printed documents have the weight of history behind them, online documentation often begins in a format ready for the printed page. With @ATS, technical documentation can be written and edited using the familiar tools and advantages of the World Wide Web. When the document is complete, it is available immediately for searching, online browsing, and, when the output code is finished, for sending to the typesetter. NCSA is currently exploring the use of @ATS for its first user guide produced online.

Ben Johnson finished his masters in May 1996 and, after giving a poster presentation on @ATS at the Fifth International World Wide Web Conference in Paris this spring, went to work for incNet in Eden Prairie, MN, as an Internet applications developer. The system was at version 1.2.3 when Johnson reluctantly stopped working on it. "There are several more things I would have liked to do," he said.

"ATS has been very useful," says Towns. "We definitely plan to continue working on it."

According to Towns, @ATS will be available without charge for use by government and academic institutions and by commercial organizations for internal use. (Redistribution will not be allowed without a royalty agreement.) Final distribution arrangements are expected later this fall.

Will Ridenour is a freelance writer with a special interest in emerging technologies.