FI86231C - Remote Monitoring System - Google Patents

Description

1 86231

Etäisvalvontajärjestelmä

The invention relates to a method for monitoring work tasks performed in a wide area at several different locations and at different times, for monitoring the conditions of their performance and for controlling employees using a two-way communication network.

10 For example, work in cleaning companies, security companies and property maintenance companies usually and in a geographically wide area in several distant locations and often at very random times or at least in very planned cases at very different times of the day. In this case, it is very difficult to monitor the implementation of tasks, for example from the point of view of work management, because real physical monitoring would require the foreman to travel long distances from one place to another. Often, physical follow-up is virtually impossible, 20 because due to the short duration of each individual task, the foreman should be virtually in multiple locations at the same time. The above-mentioned control problem is at its most difficult when it comes to monitoring working time. Technical supervision of the work, on the other hand, can usually be done retrospectively. The traditional method of supervision described above, in order to be even reasonably comprehensive, would require a considerable amount of work management in relation to the number of employees, as a result of which it becomes very expensive and is not generally implemented in practice.

30 The above physical monitoring can, of course, be replaced, in a simpler case, by the fact that the employee is in contact with the supervisor or the on-call duty or the computer from each workplace. This can be accomplished as. . ·. in the case of maintenance work, it is often done in such a way that the maintenance man 35 calls from the work site after receiving the the work is done to the on-call officer who provides the information for the next item. In this way, the attendant knows relatively accurately where each service technician is at any given time and how long 2 86231 time has elapsed for each task, which the attendant can also record, for example, on a computer. Business trips can also be optimized in this way, because the attendant can select the next destination only just before the trip continues, in which case both the distance and the 5 urgency can be taken into account. This procedure is not well suited for cleaning, for example, because in it every cleaner usually has mainly standard items, in which case the main benefit of optimization cannot be achieved. The system can, of course, be changed so that employees at each site notify the control center by telephone of the start and end of work, but as these notifications from a large number of cleaners are large and very routine, receiving them is also particularly non-motivating, resulting in high error rates and unreliability.

15

As a further development of the system described above, it is of course conceivable that the on-call duty officer or foreman or the person receiving the messages is replaced by a device, such as a computer, which automatically takes care of receiving the messages. 20 It is true that such a system is suitable for the simple control of working time and attendance and is described in DE-31 47 776. However, such an arrangement has serious drawbacks. First, in many locations, the time limits within which each cleaning job must actually be performed can be relatively loose, making simple alarm-based monitoring poorly functioning. In addition to this, there is a problem in the system that, for example, when an employee sends a message prescribed by telephone, he is not able to determine at all whether the message has been received in exactly the right form.

30 Incorrect registrations due to, for example, typing errors or line faults cause considerable repair work afterwards. In addition, when an employee can only send precisely defined predefined messages from a remote location, he has no option, e.g. for exceptional 35 situations, to send a message other than disconnecting from the computer and trying to reach the foreman with a normal telephone connection. m 3 86231 makes it difficult despite radiotelephones and pagers. Another problem is that it is completely impossible for the system to provide some or all employees with general or specific specifications, additional information or instructions, but to obtain these, the employee should at least be in direct telephone contact with the foreman. The system is not even able to provide information about such a need from the foreman to the employee.

10

The object of the invention is thus to gather all the necessary on-call, monitoring and control into one clear entity and to automate them into a system under a control center computer. It is also an object of the invention to provide a method which enables two-way communication between a remote employee and / or foreman or a similar person and a control center computer. It is a further object of the invention to provide a method by which a system user can immediately check the arrival and correctness of the respective message 20 and correct it if necessary. It is also an object of the invention to enable direct spoken communication between two persons at different remote locations without either of them having to start searching for the other by possibly calling more. 25 m or less at random to different phone numbers. The general object of the invention is thus to transfer routine tasks to the scope of automatic supervision and control, which frees up human resources for more demanding tasks related to work supervision. However, the aim is to enable versatile communication and quick and accurate resolution of disturbances.

The problems described above can be solved and the defined objects can be realized by a method characterized by what is set forth in the characterizing part of claim 1.

4,86231

The advantage of the invention is that by standardizing the handling of different types of events, the lifecycle thinking of the event is supported: all events have a clear start, processing and closing phase. The on-call staff of the Management Center will have a clear picture of 5 open events as well as the measures needed to complete the event. The management center produces a report explaining its life cycle for each transaction, which can be used directly, for example, as invoicing input data. The 10 transaction logs performed by this system allow for the seamless identification of transactions and actions taken for customer inquiries even years later. The invention also has the advantage that, for example, problems or emergencies occurring at the work site are immediately known to the control center and that, if necessary, either the newly changed information about the work or even a private urgent message can be transmitted or assigned to each remote site. The invention will now be described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

20

Figure 1 shows the system according to the invention as a whole.

Figure 2 shows some possible functions or chains of functions of a remote worker or the like.

Figure 3 shows the functions of a foreman or the like at a remote site and some possible function chains.

Figure 4 shows the functions and chains of functions of a remote worker or the like in a different application.

Fig. 5 shows an example of information received from the control center computer only, e.g. to a display terminal.

Control center communications are the key to all operations. All the functions of the control center are based, in one way or another, on 5,862,31 different degrees of excitation events received via telecommunications.

Telecommunication connections can be divided into four main sectors: 5 information connections, alarm connections, central computer connection and possibly connections between different control centers. These are discussed in more detail in the following sections.

Information connections refer to communication traffic through the control center computer 10 10. This is divided into three parts, which are the telephone exchange connections 2, the radio network connection 3 and the audio connections 4. In addition, the control panel computer has, of course, normal connections 12 to the emergency terminals 5 and connection 13 to a possible large computer 15 14.

The telephone exchange connections 2a, 2b enable the various telephone emergency and service functions to be integrated directly into the emergency call terminals 5 or the emergency telephone 6 of the control center, which may be several of them. Through said computer connections 2a, 2b of the telephone exchange 7 serving the control center 1, all the information normally output to the intermediary is made available to the control center 1. Since the computer connections are bidirectional, the control center computer 25 also controls the telephone exchange 7. With suitable software, the telephone functions can be integrated into a natural part of the control panel operation. This feature makes PBX connections one of the most important features of a control center, because it searches its files for the location and contact information of the fetched person based on a specific code signal from 30 employees or foremen, for example, and automatically transfers the call to the foreman or similar! to an employee or other registered person for voice communication.

35

One of the functions enabled by the call center connections of the control center 1 is a telephone answering service that manages several different on-call locations. When an emergency call is called from a remote location 8, along the telephone lines 15, the telephone exchange 7 notifies the call extension information and the call information to the control center computer 10, which retrieves the call from its own database. the identification information associated with the number and 5 transfers it to the on-call display terminal 5 ns. call window. In the call window, the call is detected on the basis of the identification information, and any of the attendants can pick up the call from the PBX 7 to the telephone line or lines 16 and thus to the adjacent telephone machine 6. With the identification information, the attendant is able to answer the incoming call as expected by the caller; the subscriber does not notice that he is calling a special answering service.

The usability of the telephone answering service is increased by printing a guide page to be attached to the call pick-up. Thanks to the signage pages, versatile answering service functions can be set up, in which the attendant of the control center 1 receives instructions corresponding to the identifier whenever a call arrives. The signage function can, of course, also be extended to include various intelligence and notification services, so that the attendant fills in the "display form" required for the service, including questions and answer fields, at the terminal during the telephone conversation. For the control center 1, the "forms" thus filled in are events from which reports are obtained for post-processing 25.

The integration of the call center into the control center provides a significant service advantage over previous answering services: customers and staff can be provided with a round-the-clock, 30-hour expert, fast and individual answering service.

Most of the messages coming from 8 remote locations in the field are informative and simple. The large number of messages has in the past prevented the introduction of notification messages, as voice messaging would have required a large number of staff to receive and post-process the messages. This is solved by a system according to the invention with one or more speech synthesizers 9 connected to a dual voice coding identifier used by the keypad telephones 8 in the control panel computer 10.

Using this system, a synthetically generated voice signal connection 4 can be established from a computer 10 to remote locations 8 and a coded audio frequency signal-induced connection from a remote location line 10 to a central computer 10 induced by a keypad of telephones 11 in remote locations 8. The system is ideal for transferring simple notifications. At some remote location 8, the notifier calls a certain number (the number 10 of the computer 10 via the exchange 7), which is answered by the computer 10 with the aid of synthetic speech. The notifier enters the necessary identification data by telephone, receives a spoken response to them, e.g. as instructions or for verification, notifies by entering the code number of the function and finally receives the necessary information from the computer or provides the required information to the computer. This arrangement can easily be extended to include, for example, listening to left synthetically reproduced voice messages along line 4, 7, 15, transmitting simple messages in coded form along line 15, 7, 2b, and connecting directly to a line attendant or supervisor for a genuine voice connection. '. 25 along either telephone lines 15, 16 or radio lines 17, 18. Thanks to the telephone exchange connection, all the necessary information is directly available to the control center 1.

Remote processing of incoming alarms is also possible by the control center computer 10 opening a telephone connection 4, 15 e.g. to the home of a standby service technician, which is then also a remote destination 8 and gives a description of the problem in question by synthetic speech.

35 The most diverse communication interfaces to the control center result from various security and alarm systems, often involving about twenty notification channels, representing about ten different notification formats. One function of the rationalizing control center functions of β 86231 is the harmonization of the information produced by different alarm systems for the control center 1 attendant. The software of the control center computer 10 modifies the information obtained from the various alarm sources 5 at the remote locations 8 into a uniform event format, after which the on-call agent processes the event by identical methods regardless of the origin of the event. In order to achieve the identity goal, the current alarm sources must be connected to the wiring-10 control panel with suitable matching software.

The transaction data processed by the control center is transferred at least once a day 'up' along line 13 to a large machine 14 for various further processing. This requires corresponding collection and reception software for both computers, which are not described in more detail here.

The following is a discussion of message traffic handled by the system of Figure 1, exemplified by Figures 2-4. Fig. 20 2 illustrates, for example, messages sent and received by the cleaner, Fig. 3 messages sent and received by the foreman, and Fig. 4 the corresponding messages of the guard. Messages sent by staff are divided into three categories, which are control messages, help messages, and messages. These always form, together with the logical characters or corresponding messages sent by the cable computer 25, the function chains shown in Figures 2-4. Where applicable, the connection according to this table is marked below the messages below (eg AI: "entry to work" is in informative connection with B2 "Employment situation") and 30 information paths in the system of Figure 1 (separated by ";").

Monitoring messages and connections: 35 A. Cleaner 1. Entry to work (-> Bl); (8 -> 7 -> 10) 2. Departure from work (-> Bl); (8 -> 7 -> 10) 3. Message number (<- B4 and <- C2); 9 86231 (10 -> 9 -> 7 -> 8) 4. Sending a message to the foreman (-> B2 and -> C3); (8 -> 7 -> 10) or (8 -> 7, 2a -> 8 or 16) 5 B. Foreman 1. Labor force situation (<- AI and <- A2) (10 -> 9 -> 7 -> 8 ) or (10 -> 5) 2. Messages about destinations (<- A4); (8 -> 7, 2a -> 8 or 6) 10 3. Messages from elsewhere (<- C2); (10 -> 5) or (10 -> 9 -> 7 -> 8) or (8 -> 7, 2a -> 6) 4. Message transmission (-> A3); (8 -> 7 -> 10) or (5 -> 10 -> 9 -> 7 -> 8) 15 5. Message reading status (<- A3); (10 -> 9 -> 7 -> 8) or (6 -> 7 -> 8) 6. Delete message (-> A3); (8 -> 7 -> 10) C. Foreman (big machine ^ 20 1. Basic information; (19 -> 14 -> 10).: 2. Sending a message (-> A3 and -> B3); (19 or 5 -> 10 -> 9 -> 7 -> 8) 3. Messages about destinations (<- A4); (8 -> 7 -> 10 -> 14 -> 19) 25 Help messages: 1. Opening 2. Ending 3. Playback 30 4. Correction: 5. Help mode on 6. Help mode off

Messages: 35 1. (recorded texts printed for speech by speech synthesizers 9) 10 86231

Logical characters or messages: 1. Yes 2. No 5 3. Enter personal ID 4. xx is gone 5. Message deleted

In summary, the system can operate 10 according to the following terminal functions:

Basic data maintenance:

The foreman maintains information about his or her locations, their employees, and employee hours, either from terminal 5 15 or terminal 16, which can be at home or in the office. The data is recorded from the display terminal of the large machine. The data is transferred from the large machine 14 to the control center computer 10. Figure 5 shows an example of how the basic data can be displayed on the display terminals 5, 19 or printed on paper.

20

Personnel management:

The employee registers by phone 8 with the control center computer 10 when entering and leaving work. The messages are stored on the control panel computer. The supervisor can 25 inquire about deviations from basic information using an NMT telephone (lines 18, 17) or a regular telephone and a control center computer (“Work Situation”).

Messaging (Method 1): 30 The foreman places a message in the memory of a large computer 14. The foreman can also request a report on the reading situation at a specific future time in connection with the message setting. (The report will be memorized as a message). The message is transferred to the control panel computer. The employee listens to the message when he arrives at 35 destinations or while on work.

11 86231

Messaging (Method 2):

The foreman sets up a standard message using a telephone or NMT telephone and a cordless computer. The message is stored on the control panel computer. The employee listens to the message 5 during work leave or when leaving the site. The foreman can use the control panel computer to inquire whether the message has been read, or to delete an expired message.

Supervisor Message Board (Method 1): 10 The supervisor places the information in the computer's 14 memory.

The notification is transferred to the control center computer 10. The employee listens to the set notification if he wants to know the availability of the foreman.

15 Foreman's bulletin board (Method 2):

The supervisor sets the standard notification using the telephone or NMT telephone and the control panel computer. The information is stored on the control panel computer. The employee listens to the set information if he or she wishes to know the availability of the foreman.

Transmission of notifications:

The employee can set various standardized notifications using the control panel computer (eg vacuum cleaner broken). The notifications are stored on the control panel computer. The foreman can read the set notifications using the telephone or the NMT telephone and the control panel computer ("Notification Status"). The set messages are transferred to a large machine 14 from which they can be read by its memory system.

30

The following sections describe the service functions expected from the control center. The relative order of the activities loosely describes the urgency of the activities.

35 Guard monitoring

By equipping the guards with suitable support equipment, a real-time guard monitoring system is provided, which shows the event information of each outdoor guard at 12,862,231 guard points with the time. This feature replaces the current security clock system. Guard monitoring can be connected directly to the deficiency notification function described below: in the event of a communication link longer than a certain time interval, a possible problem is reported. This increases the security of the guards by means of automation.

Alarm Automation 10 By harmonizing incoming alarms, there is a clear improvement in the management of alarms coming from the field. In normal use, on-call dutyers no longer need to know the features of all alarm devices, but information about alarms is entered directly into the system as consistent notifications and as the starting points for the 15 life cycles of an event. Each event is also accompanied by clear on-screen processing instructions, possible image information for the image processing system and, if necessary, a paper listing option.

20 Safety Notices

The receipt and processing of safety messages can be automated using either the audio connections described above or the radio network connections. Tracking of registrations is transferred to the computer. The absence of safety declarations within a certain period of 25 years is dealt with according to the following rules for declaration of deficiencies.

deficiency Announcements

In many event records, the lack of information is as important 30 as its arrival. Many data modified by alarm automation need to be accompanied by clock-based monitoring of incoming alerts. Missing events should be given a standard alarm event after a certain delay. These events are again recorded in the control center event-35 why for further processing.

i3 86231

Encrypted Messaging

In security operations, there is often a need to transmit sensitive information that requires encryption by radio. Because listening to radio channels is quite easy, data-5 transmission easily becomes a security risk. By connecting a text communication module to the guards' radiotelephone equipment, sensitive messages can be generated from the terminals of the control center in text format and transmitted directly to the device carried by the guard.

10

If necessary, a corresponding messaging mechanism also operates from the field to the control center.

On-call service 15 Various tasks requiring 24-hour on-call time can be linked together via the telephone exchange interface of the control center. This way, the same on-call staff will be able to manage a large number of on-call items using the guidance page shown above.

: V: 20: Tracking the cleaners

Monitoring the entry of cleaners to work has been difficult so far: to organize. In practice, the foreman has had to go through λ. even a large area of control in person and time-consuming I. 25 ti. The audio connection can be used to build an automatic registration function for cleaners' registrations. Using the same technology, the foreman can request an automatic presence or absence notification directly by phone from the control center computer. In this way, the supervisor's work input is directed to 30 essential issues and unnecessary inspection visits can be avoided. The audio connection can also be used to transmit messages to and from the field and, if necessary, to establish a voice connection with the on-call attendant or foreman of the control center without having to know the location of the foreman 35.

i4 86231

Maintenance man tracking

The function responsible for monitoring cleaners can also be built for monitoring maintenance personnel. A special code can be created for the expression of work transactions, with the help of which even complex measures can be recorded. Messaging and direct voice connection work as well as cleaner cleaning.

Improving Telecommunication Connections 10 By making communication between the field and work management as simple as possible and filtering out routine messages by automation, existing voice communication channels are used for better utilization and for the transmission of operationally relevant, non-routine data 15. Messaging to the field in connection with various registrations also greatly improves the flow of information: all cleaners are at the message link whenever they start work.

20 Answering Service

A new extension of the emergency service available via the telephone exchange interface is the answering service.

Image database 25 By connecting a separate image processing device to the system, various archival images (eg floor plans) can be obtained on the image monitor automatically during the event. The reference to the image database in connection with the operation instructions causes the relevant image or images 30 to be retrieved to the image monitor when retrieving other operation instructions, so that the attendant has all the necessary information on the follow-up required as soon as the event occurs.

35 i5 86231

material Tracking

The transfer of material outside normal working hours can be defined as its own type of event, according to which the data-5 database of the central machine can be updated.

Claims (11)

1. A method for monitoring work tasks performed in a large area at several different locations and at different times, monitoring their performance and controlling employees using a two-way communication network, communication in the first direction, from a remote location (8) to a control center (1) takes place primarily by means of predefined codes for the audio frequency signal, characterized in that the control center comprises a computer 10 (10), whereby communication in the other direction from the control center computer (10) to the remote point (8) takes place primarily by a synthetically generated speech signal; -without it (1) and its computer (10) there are various 15 predetermined auxiliary messages and monitoring messages and various logical characters or the like sent by the control center computer as chains of messages or various messages printed from its memory via a speech synthesizer (9). 20 A method according to claim 1, characterized in that the communication between the remote destination (8) and the control center computer (10) takes place alternately between the first and the. in the other direction as chains of functions. . 25 Method according to Claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the auxiliary messages are at least opening, terminating, repeating and correcting, that the monitoring messages are at least input, output, message reading, message transmission and that the person at the remote destination (8) evokes the corresponding events by sending an encoded audio frequency signal. Method according to one of Claims 1 to 3, characterized in that the message text which the control center computer • 35 prints from its memory via the speech synthesizer (9) can be stored in the computer's memory either directly from one of the terminals (5 or 19) or by coded characters. frequency signals from a remote target (8), where the code can denote a whole text, a word or a single character. Method according to one of Claims 1 to 4, characterized in that the logical characters or the corresponding messages sent by the control center computer (10) are such that a person at the remote destination can deduce the correctness of the message sent to the control center (1). 10 Method according to one of Claims 1 to 4, characterized in that the control center computer (10) connects the telephone of the remote location in question to another telephone by means of certain auxiliary messages and / or monitoring messages, establishing a normal two-way voice connection between the two remote destinations (8) or the remote destination (8). and the emergency telephone (6). Method according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the control center computer (10) stores the given monitoring messages in such a way that the content of the messages and their delivery times can be read from the display terminal (5 or 9) or another remote location (8) after the authorization message or printable. for or; 25 in other ways. Method according to Claim 6 or 7, characterized in that when a call from the remote location (8) is transferred to the control panel computer (10) by call transfer or by the on-call caller picking up a corresponding call to the control panel emergency telephone (6), (7) ko. caller ID and present it in response. on-call terminal (5) to the on-call attendant in question and, if necessary, in addition to the information obtained from the computer's memory on the basis of the identification information, as a guide page for providing this emergency terminal with information and storing additional information. 86231 BC Method according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the synthetically generated and audible messages are marked on the control center computer (10) as audible only to a specific person, group of persons or all, and that . Method according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the device for receiving or transmitting messages at the remote location (8) is either a conventional voice key telephone or a corresponding radiotelephone, a telephone with special keys and / or a card reader for identification and / or connection. 15 for denit. Method according to Claim 9, characterized in that when the remote communication device is present, the coding of the radiotelephone message and / or message takes place at least in part by means of a text data transmission module.